The remains of tragic João Carvalho were due to have arrived back in Portugal on the night of Thursday 21 April.
Eamonn Fitzgerald, who owns and runs Fitzgeralds Funeral Directors along with his daughter Edwina and son Justin, told The Portugal News on Thursday morning that the body was due to be flown from Dublin to Lisbon on a flight that evening.
The flight was expected to land in the Portuguese capital at approximately 9.20pm.
“We just wanted to help out. My son is in a fight academy in Rush and I’d like to think that if anything were to happen to an Irish fighter over there, someone would do the same”, said Mr. Fitzgerald.
The family are covering the €3,500 cost of flying the remains back to Portugal.
Twenty-eight-year-old João ‘Rafeiro’ Carvalho died in Dublin 48 hours after receiving nine successive blows to the head from his opponent, Irish fighter Charlie Ward, during the Total Extreme Fighting clash on Saturday 9 April.
He reportedly started to feel unwell a short while after the bout and was rushed to Beaumont Hospital on Saturday night but died two days later, on Monday 11 April.
A crowd-funding page set up to help Carvalho’s family as well as endeavours by the local Rush community are reported to have raised in the region of €10,000.