We are barely a week removed from the biggest night in Irish mixed martial arts history and those of us with particularly keen hearing can practically still hear the roars reverberate inside the cavernous O2 in Dublin's docklands.
As anyone who was there will testify, Saturday night felt like a coming out party for Ireland's mixed martial arts community. One of the principal players in this most dramatic of evenings was Dubliner Neil Seery. The Team Ryano flyweight avenged a 2010 loss to Phil Harris, dominating the Englishman throughout three rounds en route to winning a unanimous decision earning him his first victory inside the Octagon. It was one of the best nights of his professional career but few people know that just months before this contest Seery was contemplating retirement, writes John Balfe.
Minutes before Neil Seery was due to step on the scales to weigh-in for his Cage Warriors flyweight title defence against American fighter Ulysses Gomez, he could tell something was wrong. Seery had spent weeks diligently dieting and bringing his weight down to the 125lb limit that his title defence dictated. But on weigh-in day his opponent was nowhere to be seen.
"I had to push myself to get to the weight limit", Seery said looking back. "I put everything I had into that fight. I was on weight, I had done everything right and then you have [Gomez] who was pure lazy, never bothered doing his weight cut. They said he fell off a treadmill and had to go to hospital."
With that the last few weeks of obsessive training, of dieting, of preparing for his opponent had become worthless. What's more, Seery was only informed of this news after he had completed his own weight cut and even stepped on the scales as if nothing was amiss, if only to ensure he would get paid in full for showing up to fight at the agreed weight.
"I went through all of that and then was told the fight was off. I was so disheartened", Seery explained.
Such was the sense of deflation that Seery, 34 years old and sitting atop his division, thought about hanging up his gloves. His coach Andy Ryan, one of the most important figures in Irish MMA, had other ideas.
Neil first joined Andy Ryan's camp - Team Ryano - in late 2007. Seery had been training in another MMA gym in North Dublin on-and-off for a few years and was taking fights at all manner of weights (even one at welterweight) with varying degrees of success. It wasn't until Neil accepted an invitation from Ryan to train under his tutelage full time that things seemed to begin to click into gear for Seery.
Fast forward six years, nearly to the day, and Ryan is first voice persuading his crestfallen fighter that he can still make a run at the big time.
"I reckon I wouldn't be around today if it wasn't for [Andy]. I owe a lot to the man. At the times when you're thinking of packing it all in, he's in your ear telling you how good you are. If you're having an off day, or thinking of packing it in like I was, he'll sit you down and tell you that it will come again. And it did come again", said Seery.
And did it ever. Earlier this year, American fighter Ian McCall sustained an injury in training a few weeks out of a scheduled UFC bout in London against hometown fighter Brad 'One Punch' Pickett. This left the world's premier mixed martial arts league scrambling not only to find a replacement but a replacement willing to stand toe-to-toe with one of the flyweight division's elite fighters.
What happened next displayed what can actually happen when Ireland's MMA community mobilises itself. A Twitter campaign put forward Seery's name as a candidate to replace the injured McCall and, as the hours ticked over, the movement gained steam until the fans had practically forced the UFC's hand into agreeing to the bout.
"It was a shock", Seery says of the social media campaign. "You think fans forget about you, that you're only as good as your last fight. The last fight I had before that was in June so I was out for a long time. I actually couldn't believe it, I didn't think it was going to work but it really spurred me on."
Neil Seery stepped into the cage against Pickett on March 8th this year as a huge underdog and despite putting up one hell of a performance; he came up on the wrong side of the judge's decision. But even in defeat the Dubliner was able to take considerable solace in his performance.
"I lost to Brad Pickett but I really did walk away with a high", Neil explains. "Obviously I'm as competitive as anybody out there; I hate to lose. The good thing I took away from it was that Brad Pickett was a really experienced fighter, he's been in there with the best and I went in there and more or less made him shoot for takedowns. I was able to handle his power and his boxing and put him on the back foot. I took a lot from that."
Photo via Independent
As promising as his performance was, a loss is still a loss so Seery was determined that the result would be different the next time around. This brings us to Phil Harris, a fighter who Seery had history with after losing to him in 2010 but this time around things would be different. After dropping Harris in the first round, the Englishman was never in the contest and his grappling-heavy offense posed few problems to Seery.
"He was constantly on the back foot", said Seery. "From the word go he was trying to get underneath my punches and body clinch me and I knew he was going to do that because in his interviews leading up to it he said he was going to knock me out but you can't really knock someone out from a body clinch."
"I hurt him in the first and put him on his back. It was downhill for him after that, he wasn't as light on his feet. He slowed down a bit; I could see in his eyes a few times after I hit him that he was really hurt", he explained.
"It was one of the highlights of my career. There was a lot of pressure going into the fight - it was do or die, basically. With [Paddy Holohan and Cathal Pendred] winning it put more pressure on me. I was delighted, I was over the moon for both of them, but then when you're going out you're thinking to yourself if the Irish can really do a clean sweep here. It puts a hell of a lot of pressure on you, knowing that the other two were after winning."
If he was feeling pressure, he never showed it. It was an almost faultless performance from the Irishman, as dominant a win as any on the card. If you talk to Neil he'll tell you that he was disappointed in his own boxing (despite consistently outstriking his opponent, mind you) but all that shows is the obsessive attention to detail and a constant desire to be at the absolute peak of your physical and technical abilities - two characteristics needed in spades to succeed in this sport.
What's next for Neil Seery? While aware that he's not getting any younger, he feels he's got a lot to offer at this stage of his career.
"I actually feel I've gotten better in the last few years. I've started to look after myself a little better with my nutrition and the way I train. I've taken a step back now and slowed things down and paid more attention to detail. I'd love to fight again by the end of the year. I'd go anywhere. I have a gas tank to outwork a lot of younger fighters, so I'd fight even twice before the end of the year. It really doesn't matter to me. Once I'm healthy, I'm willing to fight anybody in the division."
And that's exactly the type of talk that brings smiles to the faces of the MMA kingpins in Las Vegas.
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