BUTLER TWP — Tom Buzanoski is employed by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Seth Mitnik works in information technology.

Neither will ever quit his day job.

Both love their night jobs.

Butler residents Buzanoski, 49, and Mitnik, 31, are professional wrestlers on the side. Buzanoski, alias T.C. Reynolds, has been in the wrestling business for 26 years. Mitnik, alias The Big Stiff Seth James, has been doing it for nine years.

"My grandfather used to watch studio wrestling and I've always loved it," Buzanoski said. "I wanted to get into it once I got out of high school, but I wasn't big enough."

Buzanoski began lifting weights and saw an advertisement on TV for a wrestling school five years later. The school was run by Geeto Mongol in Valencia.

After training with Mongol for nine months, Buzanoski had his first match.

He's had many of them since.

"I've wrestled in South Africa, Japan, Mexico, Korea, in 40 states. … It's been a blast," Buzanoski said.

"I only do it two or three times a month now. Since I've gotten older, I cut back. I used to go on four- to eight-week tours."

Buzanoski used vacation time and built-up compensatory time with PennDOT to go on those tours.

He worked for WWE for 13 months as a fill-in for the once-popular Doink the Clown character.

Buzanoski has run his own wrestling school in Indiana, Pa., for the past 13 years. He has trained nearly 40 current pro wrestlers, including Mitnik.

The two characters faced each other in a "Butler Street Fight" as part of the Far North Wrestling card Friday night at the Butler Days Inn.

Mitnik was on the receiving end of a ring bell to the head, a chokehold with a towel and a face-first thrust into a wall during the match.

"We know how the match is going to start and how it's going to end," Mitnik said. "In between, we wing it. You can't script an entire match. … One of the guys might forget something and the whole thing would look too set up.

"You have to be able to sell what you're doing. The matches may be scripted, but what we do out there isn't fake. You can get banged around pretty good."

Buzanoski knows all about that. His personal list of in-ring injuries include four concussions, several chipped teeth, a dislocated shoulder, a broken collarbone, broken fingers, three cracked ribs, torn knee ligaments, a broken ankle and he's had his nose broken twice.

Mitnik hasn't been so unfortunate. The worst pain he's incurred is a bad back and a split-open head.

"That was a chair shot that went wrong," he said of the latter.

Mitnik hasn't traveled as much as his wrestling teacher has. He has primarily been a weekend wrestler in the tri-state area and has never performed farther away than Kansas.

"I've had to be a little more cautious," Mitnik admitted. "I can't afford to get hurt. I can't miss work.

"Sometimes real life can cross into the fictional world."

Mitnik, who was 15 at the time, met Buzanoski during a workout at the Butler Athletic Club. He discussed pro wrestling then and was told he had to be at least 18 to enter a wrestling school.

"I forgot all about it, graduated high school and joined the Army," Mitnik said. "At age 22, I thought about it and gave Tom a call."

Neither Buzanoski nor Mitnik competed in high school athletics.

"But you need athletic ability to do pro wrestling," Buzanoski said. "If you don't have that, forget it. And you need psychology because you have to be able to carry a match.

"In this business, you're only as good as your opponent that night because both guys have to sell the match."

Mitnik made his pro wrestling debut on a card at Butler High School. He took part in a battle royal, a match in which numerous wrestlers are in the ring at the same time.

"That's usually how you debut, so you can get used to being in front of a crowd," Mitnik said. "Then, I wrestled with Tom a few times because we knew each other so well.

"After a while, you put together a few tapes, start to market yourself and you form a career as a pro wrestler."

Buzanoski recently received an offer to become the creative writer for 3WA Wrestling in Orlando, Fla. He would create gimmicks for wrestlers and write story lines for matches.

The position pays $163,000 a year.

"But it's a big responsibility," he said. "You really have to know what you're doing because the whole show depends on you."

Buzanoski recently received a copyright on a new wrestling character: Jekyll the Evil Prankster.

"It takes real passion to be good at this," Buzanoski said. "I'm very proud of the guys I've taught and the success they've found.

"That's the true highlight of my career — and Seth is one of those guys."