Dublin, Ireland, Feb. 23, 2012. A dejected Dubliner walks out of the cage. A cage where he had just succumbed to submission savvy Artemij Sitenkov in under a minute. Neil Seery’s career had been a series of “what-could-have-beens.” In his 30s, with a full-time job and a family to care for, the Team Ryano standout had but one thing on his mind: Was it time to retire?

Seery’s thoughts of retirement soon subsided, but at 32, with a record of 9-9, his prospects of being anything more than a gatekeeper were marginal, but Seery has always been one to persevere and attempt the unlikely.

In an age where true athletes dominate the upper echelons of combat sports, it’s easy to forget the unsung fighters. The guys that do it for the love of competition not for the acclaim. The guys who wake up at the crack of dawn to do road work in the lashings of rain. The same guys that will take any fight regardless of how short the notice or how heavy the opponent. Seery is one such fighter and although this trait is admirable, his penchant for taking short notice fights and fights outside of his natural weight class have been to his detriment.

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From the outside, it’s easy to glance over Seery’s meager record and think he’s unremarkable, but for fight fans all across Europe, Seery has been a favorite for years, his fan-friendly style has enamoured all onlookers, but his record has always lead to him being overlooked for the big fights.

When people look at Seery’s career after the Sitenkov fight they think “how did he get so good?” The facts are simple: Seery was always this good, the cards had just never fallen into place for the warehouse worker come weekend warrior.

Seery’s road to recognition came in his native Dublin. Following his loss to Sitenkov he was paired against Mark Platts and after dropping Platts within a minute with a picture perfect left straight, he delivered a beating for a round-and-a-half before securing the submission via rear-naked choke. Seery fought once more in 2012, placing a beating on Karl Harrison in an impressive performance.

In Seery’s next outing he was placed against top prospect Paul Marin. Many expected a brawl to be remembered between the pair of seemingly unrelenting scrappers but the fight turned out to be short night’s work for Seery as he landed a liver-kick so hard that I am sure that somewhere Bas Rutten was screaming at his television in delight. Seery’s knockout kick was so impressive that it won him an immediate shot at the vacant Cage Warriors flyweight title.

Cage Warriors matchmaker Ian Dean is known for making the best available matchups and in Mikael Silander, Seery faced his toughest test to date. At the time the pair met, Silander had a lone loss on his record against UFC flyweight contender Ali Bagautinov and many saw Silander as a stylistic nightmare for Seery. A perfect mix of strength, striking and submissions to give Seery fits. They were wrong.

As the cage doors shut and Seery entered the cage, the Dublin crowd roared. What ensued was the culmination of almost a decade’s work. All the miles he ran on those rainy winter mornings and those hours spent training under Andy Ryan with his training partner Paul Redmond paid dividends. Seery entered the cage like a man possessed and from the beginning he showed an obvious advantage in all facets. His hands were quicker, his kicks more accurate, but it was on the canvas where he would put the final nail in Silander’s coffin in the form of a deep armbar and with that a champion was crowned.

At 34, Seery’s team were eager to push for him to be signed following his title winning performance, they pushed for him to be matched with a big name that would get him the chance he had dreamt of in the UFC cage and he got his wish when he was placed against former Tachi Palace Fights champion Ulysses Gomez. But it wasn’t meant to be as Gomez unprofessionally arrived in the UK off weight and was hospitalised during his weight cut leading to the bout being scrapped. Back to step one for Seery or so it seemed.

All hope wasn’t lost for Seery, though, as on Feb. 13 news surfaced of Ian McCall pulling out of his UFC Fight Night bout with Brad Pickett due to injury. What happened next is a testament to the power of fight fans and Twitter. Every major figure in Irish MMA urged their Twitter followers to inundate UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby with requests for the UFC to pair Seery with Pickett. The Irish fans persevered for days, at one point even making Shelby the top trending person on Irish Twitter, which is impressive in its own right. The Irish fight fans’ onslaught paid off as on Feb. 20, almost two years to the day after he lost to Sitenkov and contemplated retirement Seery was signed to the UFC.

Many see Seery as a huge underdog for his fight with Pickett and in my opinion that assessment is correct. After all, Pickett has been ever impressive thus far in his UFC tenure, but Seery has never been preoccupied by what the oddsmakers say. Win, lose or draw, Neil “2 Tap” Seery will leave it all in the Octagon on Saturday in London.