By Keith Idec

Jermall Charlo is heavily favored to beat Jorge Sebastian Heiland in their WBC middleweight elimination match next week.

Ronnie Shields, Charlo’s trainer, considers Argentina’s Heiland a more dangerous opponent for Charlo’s middleweight debut July 29 than odds-makers and some media and fans think. The 30-year-old Heiland (29-4-2, 16 KOs), a southpaw from Buenos Aires, has won eight straight fights since losing a majority decision to Mateo Damian Veron (then 16-8-2) in June 2013 in Buenos Aires.

Most of those wins over the past four years have come against a low level of opposition, but Shields suspects many of Heiland’s opponents overall have paid for underestimating him. Houston’s Charlo (25-0, 19 KOs) surrendered his IBF junior middleweight title to move up from 154 pounds to 160.

“The guy we’re fighting, Heiland, has been the No. 1 contender for two years now and it’s gonna be a tough fight,” Shields told BoxingScene.com. “It’s a tough fight for us because the guy’s a southpaw, never been knocked out and he’s just a tough guy. And he’s confident. So, you know, we’ve gotta break him down. Everybody that fights this guy fights him the same way. They jump on him and have great first and second rounds against him. But they can’t keep up the pace and he comes back and stops everybody. That lets you know how tough this guy is.”

Shields still expects Charlo to become the first fighter to stop Heiland when they meet in a fight Showtime will televise as part of the Adrien Broner-Mikey Garcia undercard at Barclays Center.

“Heiland has never fought a guy who’s as strong as Jermall before,” Shields said. “Jermall can hit with both hands. Our thing is, look, we’re gonna box like we always box. Feel this guy out, see what he’s got and then go from there. But the guy is a really tough fighter. And if you underestimate this guy, like a lot of people have underestimated him, he beats them every time. So our thing is to not underestimate him, continue to train hard, continue to do the things that I know that Jermall can do to win this fight.”

The Charlo-Heiland winner will be the WBC’s mandatory challenger for the victor of the HBO Pay-Per-View showdown between Kazakhstan’s Gennady Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs), the WBC champion, and Mexico’s Canelo Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) on September 16 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.