Ian Heinisch is 7-0 in his professional MMA career after several stints in prison. (Phil Lambert/VITAL Imagery)

The gangbanger came at him with a homemade shank.

Ian Heinisch had just arrived at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island correctional facility, but he wasn’t new to life behind bars. The native of upper-middle class Parker, Colo., had just finished serving 3½ years on a cocaine smuggling charge at facilities in the Canary Islands and Northern Spain.

After being bounced from Spain upon his release, he was apprehended upon re-entry to the United States for skipping the country after his 2009 arrest in a DEA sting.

So as Heinisch found himself in holding at one of the county’s most notorious clinks while his case was sorted out, trouble immediately found him.

Heinisch had been around the block a few times by this point, so he greeted his would-be attacker cooly, getting him to drop his guard and popping him one.

“This dude had a rusty-looking knife, he was putting it close to my face and he was all, ‘I heard you know how to fight, this how we do it,’ Heinisch said. “I had learned a few tricks in Spain, so I put my hands up and said, ‘Hey man, no problems.’ Then when he relaxed, I caught him on the chin and rocked him.”

That solved the immediate problem, but Heinisch soon had bigger issues.

“Next day, the word was they had a hit out on me, this guy named Fingers from the Latin Kings warned me I was ‘SOS’ for ‘stab on sight’ wherever I go. I pretty much stayed up all night training, shadowboxing in my cell, trying to make weapons, anything I could do. I was ready to die the next morning.”

As fate had it, Heinisch was transferred to a facility in Colorado, where his original offense occurred, before anyone else could attempt to enact street justice.

After surviving such a scenario, you’ll have to forgive Heinisch for not getting too worked up about a sanctioned mixed martial arts fight. More than four years sober, three after regaining his freedom, and a year after successfully completing the terms of his probation, Heinisch has not only gotten his life back together, but he’s turned into a promising, up-and-coming mixed martial artist.

The undefeated middleweight will have his biggest career spotlight on Friday night, one he hopes will help propel him into the UFC, when he faces Brazil’s Lucas Rota in the main event of Legacy Fighting Alliance 10 in Puebla, Colo., which will be aired live on AXS-TV.

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It’s not like Heinisch intended to go down a bad path. As a child, he was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder and struggled with the challenges that came with it.

“I had so much trouble just sitting and paying attention,” Heinisch said. “My parents ended up taking me out of school and homeschooling me for grade school.”

But Heinisch channeled his restless energy into wrestling and found he was a natural. He won a pair of Colorado state high school titles, competed at nationals and ultimately ended up at North Idaho College in Coeur D’Alene, which has a perennial nationally ranked junior college wrestling program.

“School just wasn’t my thing, man,” Heinisch said. “I loved wrestling, but I just couldn’t focus on class and I ended up dropping out of school and going up to Vancouver.”

View photos Ian Heinisch is aiming to fight in the UFC one day. (Phil Lambert/VITAL Imagery) More

Heinisch settled in with a high school flame and found success working as a door-to-door salesman, but did so without proper working permits. He was deported back to the U.S. for working illegally.

He returned to a changed hometown. As happened with countless members of the working class around the country, the 2008 economic meltdown hit his family hard. His parents ended up divorcing after losing their house.

“I came from a certain level of privilege and I kind of panicked when things fell apart with my family,” Heinisch said. “I wanted to live the same lifestyle I was used to living and one thing led to another.”

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