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Mike Freeman's 10-Point Stance: Ali and Brown's Fearlessness Defined Their Era

1. The NFL needs another Muhammad Ali-Jim Brown duo

One way to truly understand what Muhammad Ali meant to the world is to understand his relationship with NFL great Jim Brown.

Brown—one of the greatest athletes of all time, and definitely the best football player of all time—always believed he could have been a world-class boxer. And he probably could have been. Ali, meanwhile, was always infatuated with football and lived the sport vicariously through Brown.

For those too young to understand, for a spell in the 1960s, Brown was even more famous than Ali.