Patrick Cummins makes for a good fairy tale, but will reality be a horror story?

You’ve got to admit that it’s a good story – in its own way.

By that I mean it’s an uncommon story, though there’s probably a reason why it’s not more common, and probably that reason is not one that bodes well for Patrick Cummins, even if we can all be counted on to latch onto it anyway like the sentimental suckers for a fairy tale that, deep down, we know we are.

And, at least so far, this fairy tale has all the pieces in play. It has Cummins, a former Penn State wrestler turned MMA fighter turned barista, doing a modern day Cinderella act at some drive-thru coffee joint while he waits for his big break.

As he told MMAjunkie in a recent phone interview, he took the job as a “last resort” after he found himself slipping into debt while chasing his dream of glory and riches in the cage. He started work at 3:30 in the morning so he could finish up and get to training by 10 a.m., he said, which explains why he was unable to answer his phone when his manager called just after eight o’clock that morning in an effort to book Cummins in a short-notice fight with rising contender and former Olympian Daniel Cormier at UFC 170 this Saturday night.

Coffee shop Cinderella couldn’t answer this invitation to the ball, so his manager drove down to the coffee shop to manually shove his foot into the glass slipper, which his other manager – the coffee shop one – didn’t much appreciate.

“I told her, ‘Look, this is important. I need to handle this, but I’ll be right back,’” Cummins said. “She said, ‘Listen, why don’t you just clock out. You’re done.’ So, OK. I stepped outside, he shoved the phone in my face, and I was talking to Dana White.”

What White wanted to know, apparently, was whether there was any truth to the story that Cummins had once made Cormier cry during wrestling practice while Cormier was training for the Olympics. In other words, he wanted to know if this fight had a hook he could sell, something that would make a matchup between a 13-0 contender and a 4-0 barista make sense.

Turns out it did because, according to Cummins, that wrestling room sob story? It really happened.

“I think that’s the way to sell the fight,” Cummins told MMAjunkie. “Everyone needs something to anchor on to make this fight make sense. … I think the story here is that some unknown guy has experience with him and has done well in the past, and he thinks he can go out there and do it. It fits the story, but it’s not fabricated at all. I think you can agree that the media has kind of grabbed it.”

And yeah, we have. How could we not? It’s so easy, and we’re such marks for this kind of stuff.

You’ve got Cummins trading in the apron for the four-ounce gloves. You’ve got Cormier facing a ghost from wrestling traumas past. You’ve got a testy exchange on “FOX Sports Live,” where Cormier pointed out that it wasn’t so much Cummins who got to him as the grueling Olympic preparation in general, which Cummins responded to with mock tears and ribbing about Cormier’s weight.

It’s all so perfect that we don’t even care that Cormier is as high as a 15-1 favorite on Saturday night. He wanted to stay on the card after Rashad Evans pulled out with an injury, Cummins wanted in the UFC, and the UFC wanted a fight it could plausibly sell. Wins all around. It’s just the fans who will have to decide if it’s worth their pay-per-view dollar to find out if fairy tales ever come true in real life.

For Cummins, maybe this one already has. While he insists that simply showing up and outperforming expectations won’t satisfy him – “For me, the only way to win is to go win the fight,” he said – he also admitted that this was more or less his plan for breaking into the UFC all along. He just didn’t think he’d be breaking in against someone like Cormier.

“Yeah, it’s short notice, but I’ve been preparing for this shot for three and a half years,” Cummins said. “Maybe not to this scale, but this is kind of what we envisioned as our step in [to the UFC]. Our strategy was, stay ready, and if there’s an injury we can get on the short list of guys who they’ll call. I’m not sure if we were on that short list yet, but it worked.”

The question is, now that Cummins has got what he wanted, is he going to want what he gets?

Cormier is not only more experienced in MMA, he’s proven himself against top-level competition. He’s beaten Josh Barnett and Antonio Silva and Frank Mir, while Cummins has four wins against guys who, collectively, have lost twice as many fights as they’ve won. Cummins may have some training room glory to boast about, but when he met Cormier on the mats in a wrestling match that actually counted, he got shut out.

Tales of his triumph in practice might make for interesting pre-fight hype, but as former Olympic silver medalist Sara McMann pointed out, it also provides an incomplete picture.

“During these practices, we are always down on points,” McMann told MMA Fighting. “We have people rotating in on us. They are people in our weight class that are eating whatever they want, they’re fresh because they get breaks and we don’t. They have no pressure on them. It’s a little bit ridiculous because these practices are designed to break us. These coaches won’t stop until you are flaking out, until you are at your absolute lowest point. That’s the way it’s been in wrestling forever. To say that he made [Cormier] cry, that’s just crazy to me.”

Then again, in a sport like MMA crazy is often what sells.

It at least seems to have been successful in angering Cormier, and that’s as much a part of the sales pitch as anything. Even if you’re the type who doesn’t believe in fairy tales, you still might be the type who believes in violent retribution. If the promise of Cummins’ “Rocky” story isn’t enough, maybe the promise that Cormier will be motivated to make him suffer will be.

As for Cummins, he seems to be hoping that Cormier might be a little too motivated in that regard. Their time in the wrestling room together?

“I think that’s in the back of his head,” Cummins said. “Even in the past couple years, every time he sees me or we talk to each other, I think it’s been in the back of his head, that I have this history with this guy who exploited my weaknesses a little bit.”

Bringing it up now as if it’s a line on his resume, he said, “Yeah, that’s what sells fights.”

“But at the same time, I need to rattle him,” Cummins added. “I need to take every advantage I can get.”

For the latest on UFC 170, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.