Rob Zicari

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Robert D. Zicari, known as Rob Black, is an American pornographer, entrepreneur, podcaster and former professional wrestling promoter. He was born August 5, 1974, in Rochester, New York. He and his then-wife Janet “Lizzy Borden” Romano ran Extreme Associates, a porn company. Zicari started directing porn in the mid-1990s; he had previously run Extreme Video (1993–1994) and, in 1998, helped launch Extreme Associates with Tom Byron, Van Damage and Tiffany Mynx. Lizzy Borden joined as an actress and director.

His work often featured extreme content and sparked controversy. He appeared in the 1999 documentary Sex: The Annabel Chong Story. Around 2000, he faced a public feud with AVN Magazine, and his products were not reviewed by the magazine for several years. In 2001 he ran for mayor of Los Angeles and received 789 votes.

Beyond porn, Zicari owned the American Cheeseburger restaurant and Extreme Gifts, a store selling adult and marijuana-related items.

In 2003–2004, federal agents raided Extreme Associates and Zicari and Borden were indicted for distributing obscene materials in United States v. Extreme Associates. They continued selling the materials during the case. After many legal battles, they pleaded guilty in 2009 to the reinstated obscenity charges and were sentenced to one year and one day in prison. Zicari served time in Texas and Minnesota and later revealed he was placed in solitary confinement because of a mistaken sex-offender designation related to the case.

In 1999 he co-founded XPW, a professional wrestling promotion, where he appeared as owner and as a manager under the Rob Black persona. XPW folded in 2003 due to legal pressures; its footage was sold in 2004. Zicari regained control of XPW in 2012 and relaunched it in 2021 after a Dark Side of the Ring XPW episode.

In 2013 he started The Rob Black Show on Blog Talk Radio. The Daily Beast has described him as “Porn’s Dirty Whistleblower” for exposing unsafe on-set practices and exploitative industry behavior. He later married Katie Summers in 2013, after his divorce from Lizzy Borden.