This had taken the place of the World's Strongest Man Super Series, although the latter continued to run with a separate pool of athletes.
However, the weakening of the IFSA, due to the economic pressures affecting the whole of the strength athletics world at this time, had led to the breaking down of barriers between the various concurrent circuits.
Such is the status of WSM that Ironmind also stated that "If you are a leading strongman competitor, or want to be recognized as one, the most important thing at this point is to get an invitation to the 2009 World's Strongest Man contest.
A further eight competitors were selected based on their showing on Giants Live (Brian Shaw; Derek Poundstone; Travis Ortmayer; Mikhail Koklyaev (injured so did not compete); Richard Skog; Mark Felix; Jarek Dymek; and Stefan Solvi Petursson).
[2] This gave them the flexibility to invite the very top athletes in the world who were not part of the official qualifying tour, or subsequent agreements with other bodies.
Results published at Official WSM site The quality in the final was immediately clear from the first event, the Fingal's Fingers.
However, Žydrūnas Savickas staked his claim as the favourite for the title by becoming the first man in history to complete the event in under 30 seconds, setting a new world record.
Mariusz Pudzianowski, despite having massively improved in this discipline from what used to be a poor event for him, could only finish in sixth, such was the high quality in the rest of the field.
However, the Lithuanian struggled mightily in this event, only managing to finish in eighth, and in so doing handed the Polish strongman a lifeline.
Pudzianowski seized his chance, and, showing his professionalism, dusted the wooden board all the athletes had to sit on with talcum powder to enable his backside to not get stuck.
This decision paid off, and in an event which undoubtedly favoured the taller athletes with longer arms, Pudzianowski produced an outrageous time of 39.38s to go into the lead.
Brian Shaw, however, proceeded to obliterate the Pole's time, finishing nearly 7 seconds faster to win the event.
After having performed so well in the heats, Phil Pfister's final continued to go from bad to worse as he failed to complete a single lift.
Pudzianowski's notorious ability to grind out repetitions enabled him to match Poundstone's 9, but missed out on an extra half point as his attempt for a 10th lift was not locked out successfully.
However, in a final of such high quality, where only Laurence Shahlaei failed to lift all five stones, a few tenth's of a second here or there would prove decisive.