The start of the weekend brought mayhem to Elizabeth, with enraged young men brawling, destroying things, and apparently using their bizarre appearance as a license for gratuitous violence.

Naturally, I blame the Pirates, at least for my role in it, which was, I guess, as a typically horrified spectator.

Just like at PNC Park.

This realization had begun to creep up on me regarding the baseball team: Somewhere in a 14th consecutive losing season, you just can't watch even one more essentially predetermined outcome without longing for a predetermined outcome that includes someone getting hit over the head with a folding chair.

Who knew?

But that's partly what I was doing at Summer Sizzler 3, the IWC (International Wrestling Cartel) card at the Court Time Sports Center Friday night, and the first folding chair came out about 50 minutes after the show started, the first unmistakable BANG! following almost immediately.

The bigger reason though, was the opportunity to interview Norm Connors, the native North Sider who is very likely the world's only funeral director/wrestling promoter. And they called Kordell Stewart "Slash."

Norm's day started at 6 a.m. with a funeral and ended with him refereeing the IWC heavyweight title match, in which he was thrown from the ring, smacked in the face with the championship belt, and self-implicated in a sinister authority-figure-gone-bad story line.

Uh-huh, same old same old.

"I dreamed about this from when I was small," he was saying during intermission. "I started when I was 20, but I always wanted to promote wrestling, to book the talent, arrange the story lines. I went to Pitt and got a writing degree, and I made a deal with my parents that, if I paid for college, when I got out I could do whatever I wanted."

Connors, who has been at it 13 years now, took over IWC four years ago at the end of its transition from Steel City Wrestling. His primary influence has been to bring in more national acts and international talent, but, in the meantime, he went to mortuary school. He directs funerals at five homes around Sinking Spring, near Reading, an easy 250-mile drive.

"We serve about 550 families a year there," he said.

I asked Norm if he ever, you know, "borrowed" one of his wrestling story lines from something that might have come up in the day job, which is really a sick question, but, look, I was a big fan of the then WWF character The Undertaker, OK?

"No," Norm said evenly. "Out of respect to the families and the business."

Good answer.

Norm prefers to write story lines based on real life as opposed to real death.

"I write mostly real-life annoyances into these stories," he said. "Hating your boss, being upset with a difficult co-worker, things that translate into real conflict as opposed to, say, a clown being upset with a monster or something."

Right, a clown being upset with a monster would be, well, actually, that's pretty good. But I digress.

Norm's promotion on this night would draw some 270 locals, most between 10 and 30, all of them demonstrably appreciative of the superior choreographed athleticism that distinguishes these kinds of independent shows from televised wrestling, where 350-pounders have seemingly traded the quickness and agility of youth for regular shipments of deca-durabolin.

The night's IWC Super Indy Championship matches Troy Lords against Delirious, a singular character in a kind of bad Mardi Gras outfit whose distinguishing idiosyncrasy is that he's afraid of the bell. He leaves the ring and whimpers upon hearing it, then returns in a full rage and yells incomprehensibly through a mask, not unlike Myron after a long Steelers touchdown.

There's also a weapons match, in which Larry Sweeney and Jason Gory sprint to a ring that is filled with things the audience brought to augment the carnage, including, on this night, a bowling pin, a car door, a wrapped fish, and a pink inflatable octopus. Gory wins despite taking a terrible beating, particularly with a computer keyboard that Sweeney broke over his head, its keys flying off like Chiclets.

Norm's featured story line, exposed primarily in the main event but skillfully deployed as the evening's subtext, is that referee Scott Colter has been letting his power go to his head, and that a superior (Norm) must bring the ultimate outcome to more judicious station as guest referee.

"But," Norm said, "it won't work out that way."

Funny how that works.

After 20 chaotic minutes of battling with Colter, challenger Dennis Gregory, and IWC heavyweight champion Shirley Doe, Norm lets himself be distracted as Gregory is pinned and ultimately delights in counting out the champion in a most injudicious manner.

"It's very complicated," Norm said, "It's a pain sometimes, but I love it."

For the typically horrified spectator, it has a vague cleansing quality. Somehow, I'm ready for the next Matt Capps game-losing wild pitch.