James Krause fulfilled with MMA career but struggling with retirement decision

LAS VEGAS – James Krause won’t officially call himself a retired UFC fighter.

Although he’s satisfied if he never competes again, Krause (28-8 MMA, 9-4 UFC) is not ready to call it a career. The Glory MMA and Fitness gym owner has a busy enough life guiding the next generation of fighters, and also coached and competed at the UFC Fight Pass Invitational 2 grappling tournament this past Sunday.

“I don’t want to tell you guys I’m retired because I feel like if the right situation was presented in front of me, I would entertain it for sure,” Krause told MMA Junkie and other reporters. “There is a part of me that wants to tell you guys I’m done and I’m good, because I wanted three things out of this when I was all done. And that was I wanted to go out on a win, I wanted to be financially free, and I wanted to go out on my own terms. Not like the UFC nudging me like, ‘Hey, you lost three in a row, you’ve got to get out of here.’ Never wanted that.”

If Krause never fights again, he would walk away having won seven of his past eight bouts, most recently defeating Claudio Silva in October 2020. His past two fights have come on short notice and while he won’t rule out another fight, he doesn’t want to disrespect the sport by not competing at the best of his ability. Right now, he is content to vicariously live through his fighters.

“So right now I’m good,” Krause said. “I have all those things, and I feel like if I fight again, I put that at risk. However, the closure of being able to do what ‘Cowboy’ did, put your gloves down, I just don’t want to do it off of a loss, you know what I mean? If I never fight again, I’m 100 percent good. I have something that 99 percent of the other UFC fighters that retired don’t have, and that’s I still make the walk almost every weekend now.

“So that scratches the itch a little bit, and I get to fulfill these other guys’ dreams, be a part of their journey, and I’m still in it. I’m in it more now than I was when I was actively competing, so it’s tough. It’s a mixed bag of emotions on what I want to do, where I want to go and stuff like that, but this does all come to an end at some point. I’m 36 years old, I’ve had somewhere between 70 and 80 fights pro and amateur. Like when is a good time? And I don’t think anybody can ever answer that.”