The stage was set for yet another month of all rugby battles this year between the most invincible side in team sport of recent time and the most indomitable team in the Rugby Championship. However, the high-intensity match in Wellington saw the Invincibles unbelievably crumbling to their vulnerability in their own backyard against the brave warriors.

As an epic might have many tragic twists in the plot, the all-winning All Blacks juggernaut was once again derailed by the dogged Springboks, who are renowned for catapulting themselves from the edge of the cliff to the summit time and back.

If the history and the home support were by the ABs side, their opponents from South Africa were grappling with a nightmarish past of not winning a single match in either the North or the South Islands since 2009 and also their crushing 57-0 humiliation in the last year.

Moreover, Rassie Erasmus' Boks traveled across the Indian Ocean to the Pacific with the heavy baggage of two back-to-back defeats against Los Pumas and the Wallabies. They were up against Steve Hansen's 9-successive Test-winning team.

The latest chapter of the long-running rivalry began with the bunch of humanoids, wearing the pitch black jersey with the emblem of white fern on their chest, went for the kill even before the sound of the deafening roar and the thunderous applause by the partisan home crowd to complement the ABs' nerve-jangling Ka Mate Haka faded away and was still reverberating across the packed Westpac Stadium. 

The well-oiled man-machine performed a smooth drill to register a 12-0 lead in no time. But the scenario changed soon and entirely against the run of play. As the unperturbed Boks kept on latching on to the rare and occasional errors by their much-vaunted rivals, the ABs were forced to taste their own medicine. 

Their historical precision turned inconsistent in front of the overwhelming power of the Boks. Siya Kolisi's spirited side was up 24-17 at the halfway mark. 

Battered and bruised, the wounded ABs launched a massive counter onslaught to salvage their sinking Titanic in the second half. But the warriors from the savannah had already tasted blood and went further ahead to reach the 36 point mark. Then came to a typical ABs final power push and only two points separated the scoreline as it stood 36-34 in the 74th minute.

The ever-consistent Beauden Barrett faltered on the conversion and couldn't just get it right within the frame. The golden boy of world rugby had an unusually off day on the field and more so with his lackluster goal-kicking.

With the ABs going for the jugular in the dying moments, the Boks held on to their nerves and the brute power within to keep Kieran Read's boys off a few centimeters from the line until Nigel Owens blew the final whistle at 36-34.

There is an age-old cliche often used by sports pundits that form is temporary, and class is permanent. On Saturday night at Westpac Stadium, it was the sublime form of a determined team that dismantled the edifice of legendary class with a Manhattan-esque success rate.