Stripped to his waist and wearing black tights, David Branch messes around with one of his training partners in the bright blue R♓enzo Gracie jiu-jitsu acade🅘my in Manhattan.
Then Kayla Harrison steps onto the mat.
Branch quickly strikes up a conversation with the two-time Olympic gold medal winner in judo, and as the pair💖 are joking around, someone makes a pile of wrestling mats.
“Oh, man,” Branch says with a nervous laugh. “Don’t messꦫ wit♑h the money, man!”
Thwack! He is on his back, laughing a♐gain. Harrison just hip-tossed him as if he were a small child, not a shredded MMA fighter just weeks away from arguably the biggest night ไof his career.
On New Year’s Eve, Branch (19-3) will be one block north of the Gracie academy, at Madison Square Garden, where he wil✃l defend his middleweight championship in the World Series of Fighting against Louis Taylor (13-1).
It is a huge fight on a gigantic stage, made even bigger because Branch is a proud New Yorker. The 35-year-old was born at Montefiore Hospital, grew ☂up in The Bronx and his childhood was pure chaos.
“I was a very nasty person, a very nasty attitude, my overall attitude towards life was depressing, energy-draining and s—y,” Branch told The Post. “Whether it was selling drugs, robbing people, at gunpoint, not at gunpoint, whether it was assaulting people …”
Branch catches himself.
“I was a survivaliཧst,” he says. “The one thing 💎that makes me who I am now is just change. The duality of how I was to where I am right now … it’s a completely different person.”
Branch teaches jiu-jitsu at ღhis academy in Hoboken. He is a proud alum of the Ironworkers Local 580 union. And he is the WSOF champion in both the middleweight and light heavyweight divisions.
At 🐓MSG, Branch’s local life and professional achievements will combine to create a cauldron of pressure.
“I’ve been through every kind of pressure system New Yorജk has to offer,” he says with a laugh. “This is just another trial.
“That’s a chaotic enviro💞nment, the cage, and that’s something that just suits me. It feels like home.”