name of the new promotion: Pro Wrestling Noah. On June 20, Misawa met with Nippon TV officials, who had cancelled All Japan's television program, and secured a time slot for Noah programming. On July 20, he wrestled his last AJPW match for several years, in which he and Ogawa won against Taue and Masao Inoue. Pro Wrestling Noah (2000-2009) First years (2000–2002) Pro Wrestling Noah debuted with two events, collectively called Departure, on August 5 and 6 at Differ Ariake. While they sold out in minutes, the events themselves were not profitable. The low ticket prices attracted scalpers, who resold $60 ringside seats for $2700. Noah also spent more than the live gate of the first show to place a screen in the parking lot for the 1,300 people watching outside the venue. In the first show's main event, Misawa and Taue lost to Kobashi and Akiyama in a two-out-of-three-falls tag match, and in the second, Misawa and Ogawa defeated Kentaro Shiga and Daisuke Ikeda. The company would struggle to grow from here, because legal threats against NTV from Motoko Baba kept Noah off television until April 2001. Misawa had not expected as much of AJPW's talent to join him in the exodus as they had, and financial difficulties caused Misawa to cancel his insurance and borrow money from his home to fund their salaries. However, Noah sold out their biggest show to date, December 23's Great Voyage at Ariake Coliseum, well in advance. In his first major singles match for his own promotion, Misawa defeated Vader in the semi-main event. Another problem for Noah arose on January 18, 2001 when, during a tag match with Taue against Misawa and Naomichi Marufuji, Kobashi severely injured his right knee. Kobashi's knees had been in poor condition as early as 1991, due to his use of the moonsault and general overachieving nature in the ring. While he intended to have double knee surgery performed at the end of his tenure in AJPW, he did not go through with it when Departure was scheduled for August, and he continued to work Noah's events thereafter. Kobashi had surgery on January 25 to transfer cartilage from his elbow to his knee. While it was initially reported that he would be able to return in July, this was much too optimistic as Kobashi would have several more procedures throughout the year. In early 2001, Misawa had