It looks like James Krause has found a home at welterweight following UFC Lincoln on Saturday — and he’s also found his swag.
Lincoln, NB — Heading into UFC Lincoln, James Krause was on a four fight win streak. And after dabbling at welterweight once or twice before, the lightweight decided to move up once again. An odd choice for a fighter on a winning streak, but weight cuts are grueling. During fight weight, he consistently said that 70 was his home, though he later admitted that if the fight went badly, he might have been forced back down.
With a finish of Warllley Alves, however, the proof is in the pudding: James Krause can hang at welterweight. Not that it’s about proving anything, at least not to anyone else.
“I don’t really care about proving to anybody else,” he said following the fight at the Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, NB on Saturday. “This is all about me. I don’t owe anybody. I’ve been doing this for twelve years. This is my fifty-sixth fight, pro and amateur. I don’t need to prove anything to anybody.”
Krause isn’t worried about any of that, since, as he put it, “I do this for me, my team, my family.” That having been said, at least to himself, “this fight was all about proving that I could be at 170.”
Krause told reporters after the fight that he feels like “more of an athlete” at welterweight. “I’m not overly strong in the weight class, but my cardio’s good, and I think my speed! I was fast at 155. Whenever I was out there, he couldn’t find me. I was too fast, my feet are too good for him, and everything I threw seemed to land.”
Pointing out that Alves had never been finished, and owns a win over interim welterweight champ, Krause sees the victory as a quality win. The keys will continue to be speed and cardio moving forward. And swag, apparently.
“I found my swag out there. My coach Mark, he was telling me ‘you gotta find you swag, you got to talk some s*it!'” I’ve done it before,” he recalled, “and I just seem to fight better when I do. I don’t know if you guys could hear me — I called him a p*ssy a couple times, told him he didn’t have no power when he kicked me. It’s not about him, he’s not a p*ssy, he’s really good. It’s about me.”
“It’s about finding my flow, finding my swag out there, getting in a groove. I think I did a really good job of doing that early tonight.”
Watch the full UFC Lincoln post-fight interview with James Krause above!
