It never happened in the decade when the prosaic nature of his heavyweight domination quite underwhelmed boxing but, at the age of 41, Wladimir Klitschko belatedly earned proper appreciation for his greatness on Saturday.
How ironic, though, that it had to come in defeat.
The veteran Ukrainian warrior came agonisingly close to becoming only the second fighter after George Foreman to win a recognised version of the world title as a forty-something before being stopped by Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium.
Bruised, battered and with a deep cut by his left eye, he could only reflect ruefully on having failed to follow up his sixth round knock-down of Joshua aggressively enough, feeling he had let the Briton off the hook.
Yet, although a 14-year age gap and Joshua's fitness, strength and power eventually saw him floored twice and finally rescued by the referee in the 11th round, Klitschko still felt like a winner at the end of an exhilarating evening.
Ninety thousand fans at Wembley seemed to agree as the man who was so often damned with faint praise during 11 years of heavyweight dominance received much greater acclaim here than he had after many of his mundane victories.
Klitschko was already coming off a tough loss when he entered the ring, a twelve round decision that he dropped to Tyson Fury in a major upset in November 2015. In that contest, Klitschko failed to pull the trigger and was unable to let his hands go.
Joshua felt that he faced the better version of Klitschko in the ring.
"I fought the better Wladimir Klitschko, not the complacent one, the guy who realised his mistakes and wanted to put it right," Joshua said.
"I can only improve from this, if I don't then I'm a silly man. It'll be interesting to see what the next two to three years hold in my career, building on this evening.
"He's been very dominant. He took a loss against Tyson Fury. I kept hearing the 'obsession and the passion' to get victory. He came to show what he was about, that he still had it. I knew it was going to be tough for him, because I wanted to do the same.
"Maybe against anyone else in the division he may have come out on top. I have the ultimate respect for what he's achieved inside and outside of the ring."
