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#3 Antonio Carlos Junior vs. Ian Heinisch
At Middleweight, tough wrestler – and ex-con – Heinisch looks to take his second win over a TUF Brazil champion after surprisingly overcoming Cezar Ferreira last November. His opponent here – Carlos Junior, AKA ‘Cara de Sapato’ or ‘Shoeface’ – promises to be a far tougher out in my opinion, though.
Quite how Shoeface has ended up facing Heinisch – no offense to the latter – is a mystery to me. The Brazilian is currently ranked #12 at 185lbs, and he’s on a 5-fight winning streak after submitting Tim Boetsch last April.
A huge, hulking 185lber, Carlos Junior is a monster on the ground with some top-class Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu skills, but he’s shown some penchant for tiring out quite badly in his previous fights, a chink in his armour that led to his loss to Dan Kelly in 2016.
It’s hard to really get a feel for Heinisch based on that win over Ferreira, to be honest. ‘The Hurricane’ did well to fend off the takedowns of ‘Mutante’ and he largely outstruck him too, but in all honesty it was a bit of a slower fight and I couldn’t help but feel like Ferreira threw the fight away by gassing out in attempting to take Heinisch down.
That makes this one a bit tricky to pick; in all honesty it feels like the kind of fight that Shoeface should win comfortably. If he can take Heinisch down then I’ve got very little doubt that he can slap on an arm triangle or a rear naked choke and submit him in quick fashion.
But given Heinisch was able to stop Ferreira’s takedowns and tire him out that way, if he can do that to Shoeface then the upset could well be on.
Heinisch looks tough, but the likes of Boetsch and Jack Marshman were tough too and Shoeface got rid of both of them pretty comfortably once he muscled them to the ground.
Assuming the Brazilian doesn’t tire himself out trying to take Heinisch down – and even then, Heinisch didn’t really show that much power against the notoriously chinny Ferreira, and Shoeface is a decent striker in his own right – then I think he’ll win this one by submission.
The Pick: Carlos Junior via first round submission
