On the mat; homegrown smackdown.(wrestling)(The Talk of the Town)

On a Sunday afternoon not long ago, the Underground Wrestling Association, or UWA, staged a farewell extravaganza at the Doghouse, a wres- tling gym in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn. UWA (it's pronounced ooh-wah) was merging with a rival league and, for all intents and purposes, passing out of existence.

Brian Ittem, UWA's twenty-one-year-old founder and elder statesman, started UWA eight years ago in the back yard of his family's house, in Glendale. Before that, he and his friends had used his bedroom to throw each other around, but his mother kicked them out, so Ittem and his father built a ring in the yard. Here the young athletes practiced maneuvers cribbed from television and video games, created new characters, wrote dialogue, decided who was a Face (a good guy) and who was a Heel (a bad guy), chose personal theme songs (Ittem's is "Devil's Dance," by Metallica), and put on shows for girlfriends and neighbors, complete with mock press conferences. Their ranks began to swell with defectors from other back-yard leagues, among them Glendale Championship Wrestling and Completely Crazy Wrestling. Two years ago, Ittem's mother decided enough was enough, and UWA moved to the Doghouse.

Ittem is small and wiry, with a milky complexion, sharp features, and curly blond hair. He works nights deliver- ing pizza. His ring name is Zena, though he often refers to himself as the Man. Over the years, he has had many things broken over his head, including a bottle, a watermelon, and a chair. "It makes me nervous," his mother, Gail, confessed, but she had turned up for the farewell show nevertheless. "Not me," her daughter, Denise, said. "Except the ladder. I don't like the ladder."

Denise was referring to a prop in that afternoon's upcoming best-of-three grudge match between Zena and his former tag-team partner, Bubblez, a spindly fifteen-year-old named Scott Hampel, who wears thick, wire-rimmed glasses. The back story: Bubblez started out in the league as a referee, got attacked in the ring one day, then teamed up with Zena, before turning ...