Misawa defeated Kawada again in a June 6 Triple Crown match. On a sold-out July 25 Budokan show, Misawa made a successful title defense against Taue. On August 26 in Sapporo, though, he and Akiyama lost a world tag title shot against Albright and Williams when Albright pinned Misawa with a dragon suplex. On September 6, Misawa defeated Akiyama in his first Triple Crown title match. In October, Misawa made two more successful defenses ten days apart. The first was against Williams on October 11 in Fukuoka, and the second was against Kobashi on October 21 at the Budokan, during AJPW's 25th anniversary event. The latter won the Match of the Year award from Tokyo Sports. Misawa and Akiyama entered the 1997 WSTDL, and reached the finals against the Holy Demon Army again, to lose at Budokan on December 5. AJPW announced the show had sold out, but it was reported as actually having drawn 800 seats below the Budokan's maximum capacity. For his first defense of 1998, at the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium on January 26, Misawa defeated Akiyama by debuting the Emerald Flowsion. One month later, he had his final successful defense of the reign against Johnny Ace at the sold-out Budokan. This February 28 event was the first in a Budokan sellout streak that would last until Misawa's departure from AJPW. Misawa entered the 1998 Champion Carnival, and proceeded to the finals with eight wins, three draws against Akiyama, Hansen, and Kawada, and one loss to Taue. This was despite various neck and back injuries, a broken finger, and a broken left kneecap, the latter of which was suffered during a match on April 6 against Ace. Despite this, and against a doctor's recommendation to perform surgery and take six weeks off, Misawa continued to work, and won the Champion Carnival for the second and final time in another match against Akiyama. Final years (1998–2000) In an effort to increase All Japan Pro Wrestling's visibility amidst unsatisfactory sales and television viewership numbers, Baba decided after years of refusal to book the Tokyo Dome for a belated AJPW 25th Anniversary show on May 1, despite the reservations of Misawa and Kobashi. Plans to use this as a "soft reset" for the company product, including an FMW-style exploding ring deathmatch with Atsushi Onita and a potential partnership with the WWF, were vetoed by Baba, who believed that "if [they] were