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.
The 27-year-old Joshua, who recorded a flawless 19th professional win, said he had to show character to beat his more experienced opponent but warned his rivals that he will only get better.
"What can I say?"
Joshua moves to 19-0 and has ended all those bouts inside the distance, even if the 11th round was by far the longest he'd been taken.
"I fought the better Wladimir Klitschko, not the complacent one, the guy who realised his mistakes and wanted to put it right", said Joshua, 27.
"As boxing states, you leave your ego at the door and you respect your opponent".
Klitschko had looked on the verge of victory when he heavily dropped Joshua in the sixth round, after which he felt he could have done more to finish the younger fighter off.
Klitschko began the fourth full of intent but it was Joshua who started quicker in a thunderous fifth round.
Fury has been inactive since his defeat of Klitschko having most recently struggled with depression, but has made plenty of noise on social media in the run up to the fight having returned to training in Marbella.
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"If I'm going to fight it'll be a rematch, of course".
"Fury, where you at, baby?" he asked.
Klitschko was bidding to become a three-time world heavyweight champion like his older brother, Vitali, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis and Muhammad Ali.
The fight caught fire in the fifth, Joshua stunning Klitschko with a sharp right hand, wobbling him with a left before flooring him with a barrage of punches up close.
This was a world heavyweight title fight that lived up to the hype. "It's really sad I didn't make it tonight." . The Briton landed a brutal uppercut which gave him the platform to send Klitschko down with an immediate flurry.
"The way he won confirmed it to me", added the promoter, after revealing that the British pay-per-view take up for the fight had been more than the record 1.15 million for the Manny Pacquaio-Floyd Mayweather 2015 "fight of the century".
"Come on, is that what you want to see?"
A rematch would be great for Joshua, now that he knows he can beat Klitschko.
"I'm even trying out to get to meet the governor, and go and get something back to Nigeria, even though we do small things for the country between my family and my mother".
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