Krause: I am out $20,000 in lost sponsorships
James Kraus: “I’m not trying to bitch and complain about pay. However, I am trying to bitch and complain. I don’t know the answer.”
UFC lightweight James Krause is in the fight promotion of his dreams, and is making more money than he ever has in his life. And he is concerned.
Krause is concerned because he’s smart. Smart enough to have three jobs – he fights for the UFC, owns a Metro PCS franchise, and has a Kansas City area fight promotion. And, he married a nurse.
He is 2-2 in the UFC with wins over wins over Jamie Varner and Sam Stout, and alternating losses to Bobby Green and Jorge Masvidal. The win over Stout in 2013 earned him an extra $100,000 for submission of the night and fight of the night. But when the UFC announced The Reebok Deal, he lost $20,000 in sponsors, who moved on immediately, knowing the UFC was going to bar them sometime this year. Being outside the top 15, he is not likely to earn a lion’s share of the Reebok money. And he has a daughter on the way.
“The window that we as professional athletes have, especially at the high level and especially in the UFC, is very small,” said Krause to Marc Raimondi for MMAFighting.com. “Hell, for all I know, this could be my last fight in the UFC. You don’t know that. You never know. So you have to be prepared for everything. In the NFL, you have contracts and stuff like that. In the UFC, our contracts don’t mean s— For us, anyway. For them, they do. There’s no security behind it.”
“You just never know what’s gonna happen. What if I break my leg and can’t fight for a year? I have no money to raise her. I have to create monthly, recurring income. It seems if your only job is the UFC, especially now after the Reebok deal, it just seems impossible to get that. Maybe not impossible — very, very difficult.”
“I definitely don’t want to act like I’m underpaid, because I’ve never made this much money in my life. So, I’m not trying to bitch and complain about pay. However, I am trying to bitch and complain. I don’t know the answer.”
“It’s tough for me to watch a field-goal kicker that sits on the bench the entire game, maybe not even a first-string kicker, make the league minimum of what*, a year? He gets paid that no matter what. If I get hurt, if I break my hand and I can’t fight in six or eight months, I don’t get paid.”
“If you put Jon Jones, Anderson Silva, Conor McGregor, Ronda Rousey, if those four said, ‘Look, we’re done,’ I think it would change. But the UFC takes so good care of that tier, why would they ever say anything? They take care of their stars, for sure. Those guys aren’t hurting for money at all.”
“I’ll be damned if I get cut one day, and I’m just sitting there with empty hands saying, ‘What’s next?’ That doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t want to be a guy that’s 35 years old, fighting to keep my life going.”
And so Krause runs his businesses, with a daughter on the way, trying to make a near future in MMA, where the salary is a salary, on a schedule, and not a purse of uncertain size contingent on being uninjured in the hurt business.
James Krause fights Valmir Lazaro on the Fight Pass prelims of UFC 184 on Saturday in Los Angeles, California.
*NFL league minimum is $420,000.