411’s WWE Dark Side of The Ring Report: ‘Extreme and Obscene: Rob Black’s XPW’

-We continue with this episode focusing on XPW. I had heard of XPW back in the day and know a bit thanks to other documentaries and some things I read on line over the years. We will see what else we can learn. Let’s get to it!

-As a reminder, Chris Jericho is your narrator for this season.

-In 1999 porn director, Rob Black combined his love of death matches with porn and XPW was born. As with most thrown together things, it all blew up in Rob’s face, so he decided to push even further. This is XPW!

-Rob Zicari (AKA Rob Black) is the founder of XPW and Extreme Associates. We get footage of Black telling us his balls are huge, smooth and sweaty. Then a producers asks a talking head if he is surprised that Rob didn’t want to be part of this episode. One talking head thinks it is a no win situation for him and another thinks it is best if he just stays quiet.

-First up is Jessica Darlin, who was part of XPW and an adult film actress. She was part of XPW for 2 years and a contract girl for Extreme Associates for 4 years. She calls Black the ultimate heel and that he spent his adult life in porn. He was doing things back then that would be seen as the norm today: gaping holes, urination, you know the norm. They wanted to be the bad boys of porn and wrestling. She talks about Lizzy Borden who started dating Rob and once she became Rob’s girlfriend she was done being a performer.

-Rob is a wrestling fan and strikes a deal with Paul Heyman to work with ECW. That gives us New Jack (RIP) and he mentions how much fun ECW was. It was a group of guys that did their thing and had fun doing it.

-David Marquez (former XPW Producer and Director) tells us the arrangement was for Black to help bring ECW to the West Coast. ECW then got a Network TV Deal and didn’t need Rob or XPW. That pissed off Rob and he held a grudge ever since. Marquez says he is an Emmy Award winning news guy and to get paid by Rob for wrestling he had to edit porn. He didn’t mind, but mentions that the content was rather offensive at times.

-William Welch, The Messiah in XPW, and he mentions in his firs match he took a chair shot to the head and Black appreciated he didn’t put his hands up. Black wanted to call him Jesus or The Messiah and Welch said they both sucked, but he didn’t want to be Jesus. He had a job at a restaurant and would be sent home because the gig marks in his forehead would start bleeding. He puts over the guys on the roster as they gave their all.

-Luke Hawx (Alter Boy Luke in XPW) says they things they did were really stupid. He did a 450 off a balcony through a table with tacks and had to use pliers to get the tacks out of his hand. Various people talk about doing a flaming table spot and they accidentally got charcoal fluid. We see the scary footage of Supreme getting burned. More footage of balcony dives, light tubes.

-In 2000, ECW held their first PPV on the West Coast and Rob Black mounted the troops to start a turf war. Heat Wave and XPW wrestlers are in the front row and get tossed out by security as Tommy Dreamer stares them down. On the other side of the building the XPW ring crew gets beat up by the ECW Roster. New Jack mentions he helped beat the hell out of them. Welch thought the whole thing was stupid and wondered why Black wasn’t there with his roster and crew.

-Commercials!

-April 2001. ECW folds and WWE buys what’s left. Now XPW got to bring in people like Sabu, Shane Douglas and Terry Funk. In their minds they made it and Sabu is here to tell us that Black told him they would be ECW on steroids. He went to Cali and found out XPW was half a porn company. Candido and New Jack came over as well.

-New Jack didn’t care about anyone wondering why he went to XPW. All he was thinking about was making money and watching porn. He continues that he was in the warehouse often and ended up with over a thousand DVDs.

-Luke tells a story where Rob cussed him out for putting his hand up to block a chair shot. Luke was always taught to do that to protect yourself but apparently this is XPW and you don’t do that. Jerry Lynn told Luke that what he did was great and to not listen to Rob. I guess Rob gets the last laugh as the next show he books Luke getting cuffed like he is being crucified. Black told Supreme to pay Luke back with unprotected shots and it’s rather nasty. He gets unloaded on and he tells us he still has an indentation in his skull. He had a severe concussion and was told by doctors to not sleep and he was concerned he may die and it’s because of an idiot who knew nothing about wrestling, but felt he needed to be taught a lesson about putting his hands up to block a chair shot.

-Welch takes the titles to Rob and tells him that he is too beat up and he is done. Black tells him that if Messiah is done then he is done as well. Borden tells him that is what Rob does as he plays with people. Rob apparently liked when Lizzy would flirt with people because he liked people knowing he had the hot girl. It also seems Rob enjoyed getting blow jobs from various women by telling them he was going to be filming a movie. Lizzy became jealous and then there were rumors of Lizzy and Messiah screwing around with each other. Messiah admits to them hooking up and Sabu says Rob didn’t care if it happened on film but behind his back was an issue. “Rob wanted to kill him.”

-Commercials!

-Messiah no shows an event and the rumors of the affair with Lizzy spread. Welch says that Rob just found out and the boys wondered why he would do something so dumb to mess with things. Darlin tells us that she slept with Billy too. Lizzy and Black’s relationship survives but The Messiah is written out of the company with cheesy graphics and a digital representation of The Messiah returning to Heaven. Yep!

-Welch says he talked to Rob on the phone and was told he had 3 days to get out of the state or he was dead. Welch told him he wasn’t running.

-Next the New Jack/Grimes story that was covered in New Jack’s episode of Dark Side. Jack says the idea of the scaffold match was Rob’s and he told him he would flip a coin to see who would take the bump. Jack told Rob that Grimes was taking the bump no matter what the coin toss showed.

-We see blueprints and drawings for the scaffold set up as the guy who designed it tells us what he went through to get away with pulling something this crazy off. He had to bypass insurance and just made up waivers on his computer and typed over what he needed. So there wasn’t actually insurance for the event as what he produced was good enough to fool whoever it needed to. The scaffolding would sway as they were fighting and Jack breaks out a stun gun. Grimes takes the crazy bump as he looks like a physics rag doll bouncing off the ring ropes. The bump is crazy, but he was lucky he bounced off he ropes into the ring instead of going splat on the concrete. Jack says that Black told him it was great and gave him a bonus. “Once I got Vic Grimes, I felt mission accomplished. So I left!”

-Commercials!

-New Jack is gone and The Messiah is going around admitting to his affair with Borden. He had the idea that he wanted to stuff this down Rob’s throat as we see Messiah working a different show as the crowd chants, “you fucked his wife.” He yells back, “she loved it,” which was the first time he admitted to it in public. His friends questioned what he was doing.

-XPW attendance starts to fail and Welch took in a show in the last row. The crowd was so bored they were chanting for a beach ball. Black was pissed when he heard Welch was there, so security made him leave.

-Welch mentions he came from work and just bought a Nintendo Gamecube. I love my Gamecube: Resident Evil 4 is still so much fun to play! Two guys came in his house and they started arguing over who was going to take him. He turned to confront them and the two guys jumped him. One tried a choke, but didn’t hook it right and the other had clippers and cut off Welch’s thumb. They couldn’t get to the other, so they tried to knock him out with a nearby fish tank. Welch can’t unlock the door without a thumb, but the guys are getting gassed. Welch catches one in an armbar and eventually is able to get the door open, so the two guys run out. He tried to find his thumb to put in a cup of ice, but passed out looking for it. Well, I wasn’t expecting that kind of story!

-Commercials!

-Joe Munoz (Kaos) was home and Black is knocking on his door. Rob wasn’t the same guy they were used to. Next morning he hears from Billy that two guys invaded his house. The story ends up on America’s Most Wanted and that is how Darlin heard about it. We get AMW footage and this is just wild! Darlin knew who was behind it and she can’t prove it but there was also nothing they could do about it.

-New Jack called Black about it and we hear the message Jack left for him. Black tells Jack he had nothing to do with it. All Billy told people was two black guys did the actual invasion. Black was pissed that people were still friends with Billy. There is no proof what happened but they all think Rob had something to do with it. “After requesting comment about this incident we received no response from Rob Black.”

-Messiah says the biggest thing he could do was going back to wrestling as that is what he loved. We see footage of him cutting a promo about not caring about his missing thumb as he could still drink beer and play video games. No charges are ever filed against Black as there was never any proof.

-Now authorities start investigating Black and Lizzy for their new porn videos. They were doing kidnapping scenes that involved cutting apparently and degrading the women. Black ends up on Night Line to defend the videos under Freedom of Speech. His defense was they just made movies, but it’s pointed out his movies are basically rape and women getting abused. Rob challenged the US Government and told his employees what to do when the Feds raided the office. People are baffled he would go on network TV and poke the bear that is the US Government.

-Commercials!

-Next week it’s the season finale: The Steroid Trial!

-Black brags about having 5 movies he calls The Federal Five that could put him in jail forever. Rob knew what he was doing and knew you couldn’t have videos featuring 13 year old girls. I just can’t! Someone asks how can the government decide what can be done between two actors that are being paid. Black and Borden face 50 years in prison and millions in fines over breaking laws about obscenity. The lawyer fees shut down movie production which meant no money for the wrestlers which meant no shows. The charges were getting dropped, but Lizzy and Rob plead guilty to one charge that put them in jail for one year and one day.

-Messiah felt Black got what he deserved because of the ego it took to challenge the US Government. Once out of jail the relationship with Lizzy ends.

-Most of the talking heads said they would do it all over again. Luke says he has his dream job in Hollywood and that likely doesn’t happen without XPW. We learn Supreme passed away May 6 and Kaos misses him as he wouldn’t be a wrestler without him. Messiah says he wouldn’t change anything as it lead him to his wife and two daughters. They are the most important thing to him.

-New Jack says this will make XPW famous again for a couple months and nobody will remember anything other than him throwing Grimes off the scaffold.

-A talking head mentions Rob is happily married with a few kids and owns a Cheeseburger Shop (they have video footage of the place). They wonder if Rob today is still the Rob Black they knew.

-“In Memory of Jerome Young AKA New Jack 1963-2021”

-This episode was fine, but would have been better with Black giving us his story, but I can understand him wanting to stay away. XPW was a blip in wrestling history that grew out of what Onita did and what ECW did and you still get some of what they were doing with GCW. Again, death matches aren’t my thing, but I know they have an audience. This is worth a watch just to get an idea of what was happening with the promotion. Thanks for reading!