been a chain smoker. Misawa mostly worked mid-card tag matches where his partners did much of the work, which was how Giant Baba had remained an active wrestler until the last two months of his life. Misawa and Ogawa entered Noah's first Global Tag League, held from March 29 to April 27, and reached the finals, where they were defeated by Saito and Smith at Budokan. In June, Noah went on a brief European tour. On June 21, Misawa and Marufuji defeated Kobashi and Go Shiozaki in Coventry; after this, NOAH split to work shows in Farringdon and Oberhausen, the latter for Westside Xtreme Wrestling. Misawa worked the former show, where he and Kotaro Suzuki defeated Smith & Mark Haskins. While these events were relatively successful, Noah had their lowest crowd to date for a July 18 Budokan show, with only 6,000 people attending the event. In September, Nippon TV affiliate Yomiuri TV cancelled their Noah broadcasts. As the Kansai region had historically been a hotbed for Baba, this was seen as indicative of the end of an era. Around this time, Noah announced that they would no longer take their entire roster on tours in order to cut travel costs. On December 17, Nippon TV announced that they would be cutting Noah's television program in March to compensate for advertising losses in the wake of the Great Recession. This marked the end of a 55-year period of wrestling programming on the station, going back to the JWA. The program, which had been airing in a thirty-minute Sunday slot floating between 1:30 and 3 AM, was still Noah's best means of mainstream exposure. Misawa appeared at NJPW's Wrestle Kingdom III on January 4, 2009, losing alongside Takashi Sugiura to Shinsuke Nakamura and Hirooki Goto. On March 1, Noah held their final NTV taping at Budokan, with a near-sellout of 14,200 people in attendance. This show was also significant for Kobashi's return after a September elbow surgery. Noah announced television deals with satellite stations Nittele G+ and Fighting TV Samurai. However, there was a low percentage of Japanese homes with satellite television. This meant that the most television exposure Noah would have going forward was a half-hour timeslot after midnight on TV Osaka (a smaller affiliate of TV Tokyo). Misawa decided to set up Shiozaki as Noah's new ace as opposed to Morishima, whose championship reign had seen business decline, and