Ian Edward Heinisch[1] (born August 5, 1988) is an American former mixed martial artist who previously competed in the middleweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Upon returning to the United States, Heinisch started selling ecstasy pills to keep up with his lifestyle after his parents lost their house and got divorced.
He was arrested for selling 2,000 ecstasy pills and headed to Amsterdam to avoid a jail sentence after meeting bail.
Not long after Heinisch started drug trafficking from South America to Spain and got caught on one of his trips when a Spanish immigration officer found one kilo of cocaine on him.
[7][8] My dream is to open up a gym that’s like a gym we have, an MMA gym/rehab facility where kids under 25 or young kids getting these huge prison sentences instead of them going to prison and pretty much going to crime school and a revolving door in a system that is broken and doesn’t rehabilitate people that can go and get an opportunity to train full time and to have great mentors and people around them and get them on track so they do get rehabilitated.
[9]Heinisch started his professional MMA career in 2015 and fought under various promotions, namely Sparta Combat League, and Legacy Fighting Alliance where he was the interim middleweight champion after defeating Gabriel Checco[10][11] and was promoted to middleweight champion after Anthony Hernandez vacated the title in June 2018 when he signed with the UFC.
Team Cláudia as a light heavyweight, however, due to paperwork issues from his time in Spain ultimately prevented him from competing.
[7] Heinisch appeared in Dana White's Contender Series 15 web-series program on July 31, 2018, facing Justin Sumter.
Subsequently, the cornerman was re-tested and the initial test was proven to be false positive and Heinisch was reinstated to the card.
[29] However, Heinisch pulled out of the matchup in mid-June citing an injury and was replaced by promotional newcomer Kyle Daukaus.