If you’ve ever read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, you know much of our world perception runs on thin-slicing — taking a quick snapshot of a situation or person we see, and making an immediate judgment. Sometimes this thin slice comes from our unconscious, and we don’t really even know what’s quite going on or why we are perceiving something the way we are. It just happens.

An example: if we see someone dressed ragged with dirty clothes and hair, we immediately think they are homeless or strung out or maybe one of the Olsen twins.

But could it be there’s a millionaire behind those clothes? There’s one particular story in the book about a car salesmen who refuses to look at someone and size them up by looks or race or ethnicity or clothing. Those that come in barefoot with overalls on get treated as equally well as the sharp-dressed man. Because of this, he’s known as one of the best and most successful car dealers around. Because, really, you never know: inside those overalls might be a fat stack of hundreds.

Enter UFC fighter Pat Barry.

Before UFC 104, dude was living on ketchup and rice, and was near eviction from his apartment in Los Angeles. But he scored Knockout of the Night and Fight of the Night in his victory over Antoni Hardonk, and got a nice little bonus of $120,000.

Here’s what happened after he got the check and went to cash it, as he described to MMAScrapsRadio:

“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 mam?’. 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 ID, I hand him my license an 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 didnt 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.”

You know who this would have never happened to? Randy Moss.

HT: Cagewriter