Rivera forever carries burden of daugther's death

THESE ARE THE two faces of Jorge Rivera.

One face belongs to the tough-as-nails mixed martial artist, the guy who gives no quarter and asks none in the Octagon. That face is what another audience will see tomorrow night, when he takes on Constantinos Philippou in an undercard bout of UFC 133 at the Wells Fargo Center.

The other face is worn by a grieving father now and forever mourning the death of a beloved daughter, the third anniversary of whose passing is today. Janessa Rivera was only 17 when she had a horribly bad reaction to birth-control pills, which her parents had advised her to take as a preventative measure for any unplanned pregnancy. She died on Aug. 5, 2008.

Wednesday afternoon, at the Joe Hand Boxing Gym, 39-year-old Jorge Rivera faced a phalanx of the media and talked about the inevitable conclusion of his MMA career, his expectations of the kind of fight he will get from Philippou, a late replacement for the injured Alessio Sakara, and the repercussions of his most recent bout, a controversy-marred second-round technical-knockout loss to Mike Bisping on Feb. 27 in UFC 127 in Sydney, Australia.

But when asked about how he was dealing with the lingering pain stemming from Janessa's quick and unexpected death, Rivera hesitated. Some subjects are too painful to discuss before a mass gathering of reporters who might consider his personal tragedy as just another newsy note or sound bite.

"It's something that I'd rather stay away from because I'm an emotional mess," said Rivera the standard-issue tough guy, avoiding the subject as he might seek to slip a triangle choke hold. "It puts me in a zone I'd rather not be in right now, for obvious reasons. I'll leave it at that."

But later, in the company of another father, who had nearly lost a daughter to a horrific automobile wreck 15 years ago, the other Rivera let his guard down in a one-on-one conversation about cataclysmic events that sometimes alter our lives forever. Tears welled in his dark, brown eyes, and his voice cracked at times.

"It never goes away," Rivera said of the hole in his heart ripped open by Janessa's death. "It's always there. But you can take that and make it a positive, in a way. You don't always have to feel like a victim of circumstances. It's possible to take even the worst negative and turn it into motivation, and that's what I choose to do.

"[Today] will be the third anniversary of her passing, and I will be ready to fight the night after. Win or lose, I'll be thinking of her."

Rivera understands there are those out there who may try to equate the difficult decision he and the mother of the first of his four children made, to have Janessa go on birth-control pills, as some sort of moral referendum. He rejects that notion on the basis that he's lived with the consequences and the responsibilities that go with premarital sex involving teenagers who can't possibly be aware of the world that awaits too-young parents.

"I had her when her mother and I were both 18," he said of Janessa. "I messed up on a lot of things. I should have been there for her more. Just so many things that I did wrong.

"I'm 39 now and I've got three other kids, a son who's 15 and daughters who are 5 and 3. I'm such a different man and father than I was. I'm so much more involved with my kids now. They are my life. They are all I think about. They are everything to me.

"But, I have to say, my oldest daughter's passing has really made me focus on who I was, who I am, and who I want to be. I came to realize that the worst thing a person can do is to feel sorry for himself. You have to keep going."

Janessa, Rivera said, was becoming sexually active and he and the girl's mother "did not want her to make some of the poor choices we made. We didn't want our daughter to be in a situation where she might be bearing a child before she was ready to care for that child."

When Janessa reacted badly to the pills, she was quickly gone, and Rivera, who makes a decent but not lush living from the UFC and the mixed martial arts academy he runs in Framingham, Mass., found himself in a protracted legal battle with a pharmaceutical company with deep financial resources.

"These companies have all the money," said Rivera, who is of Puerto Rican descent. "You can take them to court, but they can drag it out for years. Money is power."

After a period in which he found it nearly impossible to focus on fighting, Rivera snapped out of his funk, as much as he could, because, well, he had to. He and his fiancée had other children to raise and time stands still for no one.

It isn't standing still now. He is pushing 40, and undercards can be a lonely place for non-superstars as they enter their athletic twilight.

"I know my career is close to being over," he acknowledged. "I have maybe two or three more fights and after that I'm going to go home and call it a day.

"There is a beginning and an end to everything. When it's time to move on, I'll know it. I'm getting closer to that crossroads."