With the UFC dropping fighters like bad bean pies and more roster cuts on the horizon, you can bet that there are more than a few guys in the Zuffa stable who are feeling pretty nervous right about now.

It used to be just the fighters who put on a supremely bad performance got cut from their contracts, but not so anymore. The UFC is trimming the fat, which means plenty of able bodies may be getting the old ‘let’s just be friends’ speech from the UFC. But how will you know if you’re about to be the next one on the bread line?

Being the helpful jerk that I am, I’ve come up with a handy list of warning signs that it may be time to start looking for a new job (I’m looking at you, Marvin Eastman). Somewhere there is a strip club that’s about to get an influx of bouncer applications.

1. Someone keeps leaving a book on conversational Japanese in your dressing room.

2. The UFC begins paying your fight purses in change, and your post-fight bonuses in cases of Xyience and 40 oz. bottles of Mickey’s.

3. Every time you try and call Dana White’s cell phone, he suspiciously “can’t talk right now” because he’s just about to hop in the shower.

4. They take away your parking space and give it to Diego Sanchez, while giving you Kalib Starnes’ old spot. When you complain about how it’s all the way at the other end of the lot, they tell you not to worry because it’s “only temporary.”

5. When you show up to film your pre-fight shadow boxing montage, the crew doesn’t even bother to make it look like it’s raining.

6. Joe Silva schedules you for a fight with the new “Ultimate Fighter” winner. Before the current season is over.

7. Instead of giving you a Hummer after a victory, you get a bus ticket and a thermos of coffee.

8. When you pass “Rampage” Jackson’s trainer in the hallway and ask him how it’s going, he pats you on the shoulder and says, “Everything happens for a reason, son.”

9. Dana White keeps talking up this night class on air conditioning repair down at the technical college, insisting that it “never hurts to learn a trade,” before leaving you with a pamphlet and a forty-dollar check made out to the Registrar’s office.

10. You’re a wrestler whose fights always go to a judges’ decision.

-Ben Fowlkes