(Jake Ellenberger, seen here working for his money like a sucker.)

Those among us who aren’t pro fighters might think that Jake Ellenberger got a pretty sweet deal today. Because Ben Saunders volunteered to step in for Thiago Alves against Jon Fitch on late notice, Ellenberger now doesn’t have to do any work on Saturday night, and yet he still gets paid as if he had fought and won. Seems like a clear-cut ‘Nice, Playa‘ situation if we ever saw one.

But according to what he told Cagewriter, Ellenberger is still a little bummed about training for weeks just to end up a spectator in Newark this weekend:

"I was disappointed. Ben Saunders asked for the fight, Dana liked that, so our fight took a backseat. …It took me by complete surprise."

We hadn’t thought about it that way, but this is a little bit of a dick move by Saunders. He jumps up, says ‘pick me, pick me,’ gets a bigger fight and lavish praise from the boss, while Ellenberger kind of gets screwed for minding his own business and focusing on the fight he signed up for.

But, it’s like my great-grandfather used to say: “The only way to climb to the top in this world is to step on other people’s faces, especially if they’re just lousy Scots anyway."  He had a lot of weird hang-ups about the Scots, now that I think about it.