6 hours Ago By Uncrowned
Jeff Molina (center left) and James Krause (center right) have been at the center of the UFC's biggest betting scandal since 2022. (Al Powers/Zuffa LLC)Al Powers via Getty ImagesThe fallout from the 2022 UFC betting scandal continues to ripple across the combat sports world.Jeff Molina and Darrick Minner were the two UFC fighters most connected to the allegations against James Krause regarding irregular betting activities — both Molina and Minner trained under Krause's Glory Kickboxing & Fitness banner and employed Krause as their head coach.
Minner became the target of controversy when betting lines drastically changed the day of his fight against Shayilan Nuerdanbieke in 2022; Minner lost in 67 seconds and was suspended afterward for failing to disclose a torn ACL.Molina, 27, spoke on Tuesday's edition of "The Ariel Helwani Show" for the first time in more than a year, breaking his silence about the saga that resulted in the former UFC flyweight contender receiving a three-year suspension from the Nevada Athletic Commission for placing a wager on the Minner fight. Molina recalled quitting his job at T-Mobile after his successful UFC debut win in 2021, which led him to bet on MMA for the first time.
He said it started with joining a WhatsApp group chat of four to five people, led by Krause, that eventually grew into a popular Discord server. Molina insisted that he never bet on his own fights, but thought about it for his sophomore UFC outing. He did, however, bet on teammates' fights sometimes, and even against them, as he ultimately did with Minner.
"You only get paid if you fight, right?" Molina said. "And a lot of fighters do this, but the UFC — obviously, we don't have insurance — will cover anything [a fighter has injured] post-fight. So many fighters go into fights injured because of this.
I've never gone into a fight healthy. Then it's kind of a joke among fighters that after the fight, they ask you, 'Hey, what hurts?' And you say, 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes. Everything hurts.
' Even Dr. [Jeffrey] Davidson with the UFC, he'll joke about it like, 'Oh yeah, this hurts?' Knowing it doesn't, but we're going to get it checked out."So knowing Minner's mindset that eventually he's going to go through with the fight, I knew it was going to be a kill-or-be-killed type thing," Molina continued.
"It wasn't crazy money. It wasn't anything outside the ordinary that I wasn't already doing at any prior event. I had money on the rest of the card, probably $2,000 in total on wagers on that card.
And two weeks prior to that event, it was completely fine [and legal] to bet. Then we got an email, like, 'Hey, UFC athletes are no longer allowed to wager on fights.' And I made the mistake of saying, 'Hey, this is an email.
How serious are these guys? How serious is this?' This is a way of me making money on the side. Turns out, they were very serious."Molina said he bet $350 on Minner to lose the fight and found out about the injury three weeks earlier when he heard Minner scream in agony at the gym after suffering his injury.
Molina said he didn't know if Minner would still compete and he doesn't believe his teammate went into fight night planning to lose.Regarding the massive betting line shift against Minner at the eleventh hour, Molina believes it had to have come from people — or a person — within the Glory gym leaking word of Minner's injury."Obviously, what followed, and even the betting line going crazy and out of proportion, made it look like something sketchy was going on, and that resulted in my suspension," Molina said.
"I think for a line to be that manipulated, a crazy amount — like, millions and millions and millions of dollars would have to come in to change a line. That's the only explanation I can think of how a line would move that drastically."Obviously if the line never moved, nothing would have came from this.
Fighters are still actively wagering on fights. They tweet about it all the time. I f***ed up.
I should have stopped when the UFC said stop. It wasn't worth the f***ing $1,000 I won that night on a card."Minner's suspension expired this past March, but Molina is still waiting for his own suspension to lift on Nov.
5, 2025. Molina said UFC officials made it clear that he will be unable to compete in the promotion moving forward, thus he requested his release and on Tuesday revealed his signing with BKFC. Krause, meanwhile, remains under investigation and is essentially exiled from the sport, unable to coach fighters contracted by the UFC.
Molina confirmed that Krause has shifted his focus to the real estate business, which Krause began before the scandal and while he was still an active UFC fighter.Molina claimed that Krause would never talk about Glory athletes in the group's private channels when they were fighting. He does believe Krause probably bet on his own fighters, though never to lose.
Ultimately, Molina still doesn't know how the commissions found out he bet on the Minner fight."If you know James Krause, he's one hell of a coach, man," Molina said. "That's what sucks with all this.
His legacy has forever been tarnished, but ask any fighter that's been trained under James, I think he would have been the first Hall of Famer coach. He was that f***king good. Obviously, he's a mastermind of the sport and could break down fights very well.
"It started with just making a couple extra $100 a month, which helped for a guy that wasn't working a job and training full time."Hear much more from Molina on the UFC's 2022 betting scandal and the saga of the past three years in his candid and wide-ranging interview on "The Ariel Helwani Show" above..
