Pat Barry: from living on rice and ketchup to trying to cash a $120,000 check

Pat Barry’s surprise TKO win over Antoni Hardonk on the UFC 104 preliminary card didn’t impress. I recall it being a rather ugly back-and-forth affair, and since I had no horse in that race, it didn’t matter what the outcome was. I do remember thinking that its earning Knockout of the Night as well as Fight of the Night (instead of the main event) was shocking. Well, now I’ll pay a little more attention to Barry if for no other reason than his circumstances heading into that fight.

Here’s what Barry told Fiveknuckles.com:

“I showed up to this fight broke. When we got to Los Angeles on Tuesday, I had zero dollars to my life. I’m not even joking around. I had nothing sitting in the bank, nothing under the mattress at home, not even a piggy bank; nothing at all. Two days before we got to LA, I was literally eating white rice and ketchup. I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want anybody to worry or figure I was taking this fight for the money because I really wanted to fight. Financially I had nothing. I had no choice but to win.”

Barry was paid $7,000 to fight, another $7,000 for the win and $120,000 in fight bonuses. I’m thinking he’s been eating a bit better since. Although seeing any of that money was a bit of a hurdle, as he told MMAscrapsradio.com:

“It wasn’t until Tuesday when I got back home that I got a knock on the door, a special delivery for me. I opened it up and when I saw it, I was like, ‘What the…’ They weren’t joking man they seriously sent me a check for $120,000. I wrote to Joe Silva and said if this was an April Fool’s joke, let me know because I’m about to jump up and down and take off my clothes and run around the street naked. They said it was real man, it was real.

“I walk outside to get my car and my car doesn’t start so I’ve got on a t-shirt and I’ve got some pink stripy shorts on, some flip-flops and a black eye. So I’ve got to stand in the street and flag people down, and I’m sweating…I’ve got to flag people down with a black eye and sweat marks to try to get me a jump.

“I finally get this guy and I say ‘Yo man, I have a $120,000 in my pocket…can you give me a jump?’ He was like ‘Yeah man I’ll give you a jump.’ It looked like ‘Hey man can you help me jump start this car I’m trying to steal right now.’ I go to the bank, I’m sweaty, I’ve got the black eye, I haven’t shaven in two days, I’m strung out because I haven’t slept, I have green circles under my eyes so I’m like ‘Can I have a deposit slip ma’am?’ She gives it to me, I fill it out hand it to her. She looks at the deposit slip, then the check, then looks at me and says ‘Excuse me I’ll be right back.’ Then a manager comes out, a guy in a suit and says ‘What seems to be the problem?’ I was like ‘Well I have a black eye, that’s the only problem I know this looks really ridiculous.’ So he asks me for my I.D., I hand him my license and he’s like ‘Your license says Pat Barry, but this check was written to Patrick Barry.’ So I decided to be funny and tell him Pat Barry is in my trunk right now. He didn’t laugh. So I told him take your time man do whatever you need to do because I have no where to go and my truck probably wont start when I go outside so you can just do whatever you need to do. An hour later he came back and everything was fine, the check was in my bank account.”