A nice article on Bill Tate, Dempsey sparring partner

This is actually a huge unknown in relation to the era which sometimes even our best historians do overlook or dismiss. For the record, it looks like Tate went on to win this fight (i think). If memory serves me correct, this is probably around about the same time that Dempsey wrote an article saying that Wills was not the best coloured fighter as he could not beat Tate. It puts a different complexion on things if this was one of the only times Tate didnt go all in against Wills. We dont know, whether or not this is the case,(even based on this article) but sometimes, we are all too ready to dismiss contemporary opinion just because of Newsaper articles, without remembering that they often intentionally wrong and biased for the purposes of manipulating public opinion.

Many fighters are much better than we realise and contemporary opinion, particularly well connected ones are not as wrong as often as we tend to think nowadays.