Few great fighters have been unfairly defined by the fights they couldn’t secure during their careers like “The Black Panther” Harry Wills.

When Wills died on December 21, 1958, his obituaries mentioned Jack Dempsey, the one that got away from Wills, as much as Wills himself.

Even many of Wills’ Black contemporaries managed to counterbalance their unsuccessful attempts at getting a world title shot by staying busy, fighting with fan-friendly styles or becoming incredibly popular abroad. Wills got the money instead, but he always said he wanted that title shot.

Like most Black fighters of the early 20th century, and especially the heavyweights, Wills faced social and political opposition when he attempted to face any white opponents at all.

In The Ring’s acknowledgment of Wills following his death, Jersey Jones wrote, “White heavyweights were not too enthusiastic about stacking up against the powerful Louisianan. In fact, during his entire career it is doubtful if Wills faced more than a dozen Nordic representatives, but he kept himself busy accommodating all the leading Negroes, with the one exception of Jack Johnson.”

Indeed, Johnson’s time as a top fighter was all but done by the time Wills became an actual contender. By then, Sam Langford was the next great Black fighter without a world championship to his name. The official tally of how many times Wills and Langford fought is at about 17 and has changed multiple times as history’s researching tools improve, but Wills insisted until he died that he met Langford 22 times.

This was, of course, out of necessity. Wills had no access to a greater variety of opponents, yet he still fought more than 100 times, albeit carefully maneuvered at times so as to avoid losing badly and missing out on a potential title shot should one come along. Even so, he held the Black heavyweight title for nearly 10 years.

Wills actually almost secured the Dempsey fight twice while he was the Black heavyweight champ. The first time, in 1922, promoter Tex Rickard selected a date and even printed out tickets to the event, which was to have taken place at the Boyle’s Thirty Acres venue in New Jersey that Rickard had custom-built for Dempsey’s defense against Georges Carpentier the year earlier.

A mixture of bad luck and good luck hit as Dempsey happened to be feuding with Rickard at the time.

“For a time there I thought [Wills and I] had a match,” Dempsey wrote in his 1960 autobiography. “I was on the rocks with Kearns at the time and trying to do my own business.”

When Dempsey’s side of the guarantee fell through as the syndicate of businessmen couldn’t produce the cash, Dempsey pulled out of the fight and Rickard took to the press, accusing Dempsey of demanding too much up front. Ironically, Wills made one of his biggest paydays with a $50,000 guarantee up front for a fight that never ended up happening.

Years later, when the two were to meet once more, negotiations were squashed by the New York State Athletic Commission’s inaugural leader William Muldoon, a strict and harsh former Greco-Roman wrestling champion who trained John L. Sullivan. Muldoon allegedly feared a mixed-race bout between Dempsey and Wills would surely cause riots and violence.

Though Muldoon’s concern wasn’t completely unfounded, since memories of race riots in the wake of Jack Johnson’s thrashing of former champion James Jeffries still haunted the boxing establishment, other divisions already crowned Black world champions against white fighters without issue. Even if it were partially true, the issue of social unrest was almost certainly primarily a tool to keep the heavyweight title moving in only one direction. And unfortunately it worked.

Not until Joe Louis 10 years later would boxing see another Black heavyweight champion, and by then Wills was long gone from the game.

In truth, Wills was many things. For starters, he was a young man from New Orleans who wanted to be a jockey before he simply became too big. So Wills worked as a wealthy man’s valet, then as a longshoreman before eventually learning how to box. He was generally well-liked in the fight community and someone quick to help.

There was an anecdote that traveled boxing circles for years describing Wills’ actions at the 1925 funeral of New York promoter and manager Silvey Burns. When pallbearers couldn’t get Burns’ casket through the door and down the stairs of his third-floor tenement, Wills carefully grabbed the 500-pound casket himself and carried it safely down two flights of stairs.

Lastly, Wills was one of Dempsey’s biggest admirers.

“My only regret in life is that I never got a shot at Dempsey, [and] I’m sure I could have beaten him,” Wills famously said. It’s a more attention-grabbing quote than what he said after that: “It wasn’t Jack’s fault. He wasn’t scared of anyone. He was a great fighter.”

There are worse and more nefarious fighters than Dempsey that a man’s legacy could be tied to. But in a fair world, in a just sport, Wills would have been given the respect of the acknowledgement that he fought his own separate career away from Dempsey when he could have simply walked away.