Adult gossip legend Gene Ross has officially retired. Rob Black made the announcement on his show today. www.robblackshow.com. A veteran of 28 years in the adult industry, Gene has been a voice that, whether you like what he said or not, could not be ignored.

Rob Black had this to say about his old friend:

“Let me give you a little breakdown of Gene Ross and I’m gonna do this very fitting. This is a man who has worked his ass off for almost 30 years in a business that no one has never given 2 shits about and for his contributions to the business what he gets is a big fuck you.”

“When he made stars like John Stagliano, and created the concept of inside adult gossip, he was everybody’s friend and everybody loved him.”

“He moved to Los Angeles from Philadelphia with Paul Fishbein. Gene moved to Los Angeles with Paul to help make AVN bigger and better. Everyone has a revision of history about his stake in the company, but when you uproot and move from the east coast to the west coast because a charismatic leader like Paul Fishbein says we’re all gonna be billionaires, you take him at his word. Paul and Gene packed up and moved to Los Angeles to make AVN grow and was assured that he had a piece of that growth.”

“But when Paul got to LA, he met other individuals with cash who convinced him that they could help him more than anyone from Philly could. After a while, Gene asked Paul about the piece he promised, Paul said “I never said you had a piece of an ownership”

“Granted, Gene Ross made good money at AVN, had a good position and had a good life at AVN. But not the life of an owner, someone with more of a stake in the company that a paycheck and a company car.”

So as time went on, and Paul made more money and Paul distanced himself from Gene Ross, the business started to shift to more of an online entity, and the magazine format started to die out, and Paul did a horrible job of managing the magazine and managing money.”

“Alienation started to creep in with Gene and other staff members who started to speak up, disagreeing with how things were run. Disgruntled and unhappy, Gene left AVN to take a job with Extreme Associates.”

“Now, Gene Ross in a million years would have never come to work for Rob Black and Extreme Associates had Paul Fishbein done the right thing. But Paul Fishbein has never done the right thing, so Gene left to work for me at Extreme.”

“At Extreme, we created generossextreme.com, which was what the gossip sites in the modern day of pornography have become.”

“After Extreme got indicted, Gene went on to create Adultfyi.com and he had numerous people from Bill Fox to Michael Fattorosi who claimed they could help him, and when the industry was thriving, he had people like James Bartholet and Evil Angel paying 500 here, 400 here to advertise, in essence to run press releases, because as you know if you post any information that is useful or controversial only pisses people off. So you have to run the fine line of being a news agency and being a whore.”

“So as the business dissipated and you had more and more people not taking ads out, the finances shrunk and Gene had to downsize. ”

From time to time, from me being in prison and coming out and starting the parody revolution at Exquisite, a company that was dying, I would send Gene press releases and we would talk from time to time and talk about our woes, and Gene would say I’m about done with this shit, because I’m making about $100 from this site, I’ve downsized and I have to listen to assholes like James Bartholet bitch and moan and pull ads because the site is too negative and Christian Mann going around telling people threatening them and telling them not to advertise. Gene said I’m done”

“I said, Gene c’mon what are you gonna do? Tell you what, I’ll take the site over and we’ll create some hype and get it going again and get us back again. He said, no I’m going into the memorabilia business with Scotty Schwartz, I got my Social Security kicking in, and I don’t need to listen to assholes that nobody gives a shit about complain because I said their tie doesn’t look right. I’m done.”

“So I said Gene, go with that plan and we’ll have some fun and create some controversy in the meantime and when the time comes you do your thing.”

“So the time has come, he says. I’ve got too much to do with setting up autograph signings with the Married with Children cast and Henry Winkler and making money than to do stories about crying HIV victims and pimps that everyone plagiarizes and I get no credit for for free.”

“I said you’re right. 15,000 a month and hang out with celebrities or write 2-3 stories a day about brain dead porn stars and criminals is a no brainer. Do what you gotta do.”

“Adultfyi will go on. We will continue to report everything we do to try to make a difference. I want to thank Gene Ross for everything he’s done to help get the word out in a thankless business.”

Take a look at this clip from the days at Extreme with Gene, Rob, Tom Byron, Thomas Zupko and a special appearance by Turd Ferguson. It’s from the judging sequence in Extreme Boot Camp.

Vaya con dios Geno. We’ll always have the memories. And the Frangelico.