Retro (But not really) Recommendations: Tatsuya Kawajiri vs. Eddie Alvarez

I’m a strange cookie, I’ve got a library of thousands of fights stored in my memory bank and sometimes a fight just springs into my mind so I am forced to go and re-live the magic that was.

Usually I dish up some fun tilts from the Shooto library from the mid-to-late nineties but Eddie Alvarez vs. Tatsuya Kawajiri is a forgotten gem out there and one of the better fights on the 2008 calendar.

Alvarez was a barely-known commodity outside of the hardcore fight fan circles before entering the DREAM Lightweight Grand Prix as an underdog. The Philadelphia native  tore through the field beateing Andre Amade & Joachim Hansen to make it to his semi-final tilt with home-grown favorite Kawajiri.

‘The Crusher’ had become a cult-favorite in Japan learning the ropes on the Shooto circuit and gettting mainstream coverage on the Pride Bushido circuit and was considered one of the top seeds in the sixteen-man field before he went toe-to-toe with Alvarez in a ‘Fight of the year’ candidate.