It turns out that Marvin Lewis and Hue Jackson, whose boyhoods on opposite coasts were mesmerized by the deeds and words of Muhammad Ali, both have signed Ali boxing gloves hanging in their homes.
“I guess we’re going to put them on and lace them up,” Jackson says with a laugh from Cleveland, where he now coaches the Browns and is preparing for one of those AFC North 15-round slugfests against Lewis’ Bengals.
“I always tell people someone paved the way for you. Someone helped you get to where you are,” says Jackson, who was nine when he listened as Ali won the heavyweight title a second time tying up George Foreman in the rope-a-dope.