For the lucky souls who packed out The O2 in Dublin for UFC Fight Night 46 in July 2014, the expectation that more such heady nights were on the horizon for Irish MMA was likely unavoidable.

And, as it happens, further immortal moments followed when, less than a year and a half later, Conor McGregor took just 13 seconds to usurp Jose Aldo as the UFC featherweight champion against the backdrop of an uncannily familiar patriotic fervor at UFC 194 in Las Vegas.

However, a credible argument could be made that even McGregor’s antics at Sin City’s MGM Grand Garden Arena last December did not surpass that famous summer evening back home in Dublin.

Why? Because the former was about the collective – something much greater than one man reaching the pinnacle of his rarefied profession. It was the grand unveiling of a sporting subculture that was long-overdue validation.

All five Irish fighters who competed at UFC Fight Night 46 emerged victorious and, for a very brief moment in time, Ireland was at the center of the MMA universe. Perhaps, on reflection, the only way was down from those vertiginous heights.

The evidence is certainly compelling. Since McGregor defeated Aldo, the narrative of Irish MMA has taken a jarringly unwanted turn.

SBG Ireland stalwarts Paddy Holohan and Cathal Pendred both retired at the age of 27, Norman Parke and Paul Redmond have received their UFC pink slips, and McGregor is embroiled in a seemingly unending social media spat with Zuffa brass.

Yet all that pales in significance when contemplating the shocking death of Portuguese fighter Joao Carvalho following a bout with Charlie Ward last month at National Arena in Dublin.

Related Portuguese fighter Joao Carvalho dies following MMA loss

Bursting the Irish MMA bubble

For Irish flyweight Neil Seery (16-11 MMA, 3-2 UFC), who meets Kyoji Horiguchi (16-2 MMA, 5-1 UFC) on the UFC Fight Pass prelims at Sunday’s UFC Fight Night 87 event in Rotterdam, Netherlands, such a harsh dose of reality was inevitable.

As a married father of four, the 36-year-old also admitted to having been profoundly affected by the news of Carvalho’s passing.

“To be perfectly honest, it was only a matter of time before the bubble burst,” Seery told MMAjunkie. “I said it to a couple of people last year that when a country is on a high – you’ve got this many athletes in the UFC and everybody looking in at it – the bubble will burst. Obviously that’s the case at the minute.

“We’ve only got four fighters left in the UFC at the minute: Conor, myself, ‘Ais’ (Aisling Daly) and Joseph Duffy. It’s like everything else – the Irish will have it good for a while, tough for a while, and then it’ll come good again. And I believe it will.”

Still, the Carvalho news was especially jarring.

“The death of Joao Carvalho a couple of weeks ago puts a bad taste in people’s mouths with MMA in Ireland,” Seery said. “You’d be lying to say it doesn’t frighten you. Stuff like this always frightens you, but my outlook is that it was a freak accident, and it just so happened to be in Ireland. It was destined to happen around the world, and it will be destined to happen again.

“But, does it stay in your mind before you go out? Of course it does. We’ve all got families and young kids, and nobody wants to die in there, but it does happen.”

Considering his life outside the octagon, Seery is somewhat of an outlier on the ever-dwindling list of Irish fighters on the UFC roster. First and foremost, he’s nearly a decade older than his contemporaries and was 34 before making his promotional debut at UFC Fight Night 37 in London two years ago.

The Cage Warriors flyweight champion at the time, the Dubliner was drafted in on less than two weeks’ notice to face Brad Pickett after Ian McCall suffered an injury. Despite dropping a unanimous decision to Pickett, Seery did enough to warrant a UFC contract at a time he felt such things had passed him by.

The McGregor illusion

During the 11 years he’s fought professionally, Seery has retained a full-time job as a warehouse manager, so as to never be reliant on such a fickle industry as his main source of income. At the Team Ryano MMA gym in north Dublin, he implores all up-and-coming fighters to do likewise.

He believes that McGregor’s meteoric rise to fame and fortune has unduly distorted expectations at the grassroots level in Ireland.

“You’ve got Norman Parke – he’s without a contract, without a job,” Seery said.

“With Paul Redmond (Team Ryano stablemate), you’ve got the exact same thing. He gave up a good job to go and pursue a career with the UFC, and two fights later, he was out the door.”

It’s a lesson, he said, many UFC newcomers and hopefuls are slow to learn.

“People are fooled when they walk through that door because they think they’ve got job security – but you’ve got nothing,” he said. “You’ve got a piece of paper that says you’ve got a four-fight contract, but that doesn’t mean to say you’re going to get four fights and make a million dollars.

“To me, it’s like every other good ride. It was always destined to come to an end, whether it’s a good end or a bad end. That’s why I’ve always told people to put something in place and try to do something else. Fighting is Plan B, so you should already have Plan A tucked away.

“People seem to be really fooled by this profession at the minute, and there’s not many people that are going to succeed in what Conor is doing. You can hear it in the voice of every young fighter thinking they’re going to be the next Conor McGregor. It’s an illusion, and I’m telling you that you’re not going to be the next Conor McGregor because he’s a one in a million.”

Before recently announcing his retirement due to a rare blood disorder, Holohan was due to share Sunday’s UFC Fight Pass prelims with Seery in a flyweight bout against Willie Gates (12-6 MMA, 1-2 UFC), who now faces Ulka Sasaki (18-3-2 MMA, 1-2 UFC).

Seery texted Holohan to commiserate about the unfortunate situation, but, with the latter setting up an SBG affiliate gym in his native Tallaght, the former is convinced that his abbreviated time in fighting will not be felt so acutely and that a stellar coaching career is surely afoot.

Ever the pragmatist, Seery looks forward to the showdown with Horiguchi with nothing but relish because, for him, the outcome matters not. It’s the previous 15 minutes of attrition that he truly revels in.

“I don’t need anything else from the sport because it’s been fantastic to me,” Seery said. “I’m under no illusion that it is going to come to an end, and as long as I’m healthy walking away from the game, I really don’t care about anything else.

“I’m 3-2 in the UFC, and there’s a possibility that, by next week, I’ll be 3-3 and the UFC could give me my marching orders. But I won’t shed a tear or be disappointed. I’ll clock back into work and will look back on a great ride.”

For more on UFC Fight Night 87, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.