In the early years of Rocket League esports, when Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars veterans were trying to decide whether this new sequel would last, Jayson “Fireburner” Nunez became one of the players who proved that a full competitive scene was possible. A SARPBC grinder turned Rocket League champion, he helped build Kings of Urban into North America’s first great team, carried that core into NRG Esports, and then spent seven straight seasons at the Rocket League Championship Series World Championship without ever lifting the trophy himself.
For Esports Legacy Profile, Fireburner’s story is the story of an entire era. He bridged the gap between pre-RLCS online weeklies and sold out arenas, mastered the third man role before the community had a name for it, and then moved to the coach’s seat while still carrying the weight of “best to never win Worlds” on his resume.
SARPBC Roots And The Birth Of Kings Of Urban
Before Rocket League ever appeared on PlayStation Plus, Nunez was already playing its predecessor. The Rocket League Esports Wiki describes him as a veteran of SARPBC who preferred the prequel so much that he initially ignored Rocket League’s alpha and beta. Only when he saw how quickly the new game was exploding after launch did he give it another chance, and this time he found a game that had improved in almost every way.
By that point, other SARPBC standouts had already formed Cosmic Aftershock and were winning nearly every early tournament in sight. To challenge them, Nunez assembled a pickup lineup of fellow veterans Gambit and Kyle Masc, entered the first Major League Gaming tournament, and handed Cosmic their first recorded loss. That upset planted the seeds of a rivalry and gave his new team a permanent name: Kings of Urban.
Kings of Urban kept that name as rosters shifted. In one of the most important moves of his career, Fireburner rebuilt around newcomers Jacob and Moses, younger players who did not share his SARPBC background but quickly grew into top tier teammates. With this trio, Kings of Urban became one of North America’s best teams and the first to knock the fan favorite iBUYPOWER Cosmic off the top of the North American Power Rankings. Their matches in the Rocket League Central Pro League, including a narrow seven game loss to Flipsid3 Tactics after a run that earned them the top playoff seed, helped turn his handle into a familiar one for early esports viewers.
RLCS Season 1: From Top Seed To Day One Exit
When Psyonix and Twitch announced the first Rocket League Championship Series in 2016, nearly every top roster in the world made changes to prepare. Kings of Urban responded by replacing Moses with another SARPBC veteran, Sadjunior, recently freed from iBUYPOWER Cosmic. With that trio, they surged through North American group play and the first online finals, then recovered from a dip in the second qualifier to win the online bracket and secure the number one seed from North America for the first World Championship.
On paper they were a favorite. At the LAN itself, they ran into the unpredictability that would haunt Fireburner’s career. European underdogs The Flying Dutchmen upset Kings of Urban in their opening match, sending them into the lower bracket. There they drew Flipsid3 Tactics, one of the tournament favorites, and bowed out in a four game defeat. A summer of dominance ended with a first day elimination.
Even in the middle of that rise, Nunez was already part of Rocket League’s efforts to reach new audiences. In 2016 he joined Jacob, Sadjunior, and Moses in playing showmatches at the White House “#GetCovered” event, one of the earliest high profile public showcases for the game as part of an American healthcare enrollment campaign.
NRG Esports And Early RLCS Struggles
Kings of Urban stayed together after the Season 1 LAN and, by late 2016, finally attracted a major organization. NRG Esports signed the team in October and carried that core into RLCS Season 2. Under the new banner they finished second in North American league play and then won the regional championship by defeating Orbit in the grand finals, a domestic breakthrough that should have set them up for redemption at the next World Championship.
Instead, the pattern repeated. At the Season 2 LAN, NRG lost their opening match to Precision Z, recovered with a sweep of Genesis, and then once again ran into Flipsid3 Tactics in an elimination series that ended with a four game defeat. Two straight seasons of early exits convinced Nunez that the lineup needed a fundamental change. After Los Angeles, he and NRG parted ways with Sadjunior and signed rising star Garrett “GarrettG” Gordon.
For Season 3, that change paid off quickly. Even though NRG failed to win minor tournaments in the offseason, Fireburner insisted publicly that the team was making progress and fine tuning their style. When RLCS league play arrived, NRG dominated North America again, finishing first in the table and claiming a third straight regional title. At the World Championship in Los Angeles they finally went deeper, reaching the top four and finishing third overall, the first deep LAN run of Nunez’s RLCS career.
The 50/50 God And A New North American Standard
The partnership with GarrettG defined the middle of Fireburner’s playing career. While his teammates tended to draw the flashier montage clips, analysts and opponents repeatedly pointed to his challenge game and positioning as the backbone of NRG’s system. The official RLCS Season 8 roster moves article later described him as the “90/10 god,” a player whose midfield challenges seemed to win far more often than they should and who made it unusually difficult for opponents to clear the ball cleanly.
Those fundamentals paired well with NRG’s growing mechanical talent. In 2017 he and GarrettG collected a string of offline results that still stands out in North American history, including victories at the FACEIT X Games Invitational and the League of Rockets World Cup, along with a win at the Nexus Gaming Summer Invitational and a series of top finishes at DreamHack events and online circuits.
At the same time, NRG continued to build their RLCS resume. With Jacob still in the lineup, they finished fourth in Season 4 league play, reached third at the Season 4 North American championship, and returned to the World Championship. Their LAN struggles continued as they placed ninth to tenth in Washington, D.C., but the team’s body of work on both sides of the Atlantic began to push Nunez into conversations about the best players in the world.
London And The Greatest Near Miss
Fireburner’s defining season arrived in 2018. With Justin “JSTN” Morales replacing Jacob, NRG stormed through Season 5 North American league play with a perfect record and then finished runner up at the regional championship, comfortably qualifying for the World Championship in London. Their dominance continued on LAN, where they sent defending champions Dignitas to the lower bracket and reached the grand finals from the upper side.
The grand final that followed has been called the greatest series in Rocket League history. After Dignitas reset the bracket, the second best of seven went all the way to game seven. In the final seconds of regulation, NRG trailed by one. On the last play of the series, Fireburner dove into a midfield challenge that kept the ball alive and set up JSTN’s zero second goal, a shot that drew the legendary “This is Rocket League” call from caster Shogun and forced overtime with the world title hanging in the balance.
Dignitas ultimately scored in overtime to win the championship. NRG left London with a silver medal and the knowledge that they had been a single bounce away from a title. Analysts later highlighted that loss, along with three other major LAN grand final defeats, as part of why Nunez ended up on lists of the best players to never win an RLCS World Championship. In 2020, GGRecon ranked him among the top ten players without a world title and emphasized both the breadth of his results and the fact that he had appeared at every RLCS World Championship from Season 1 through Season 7.
Final RLCS Seasons And Retirement
After London, Fireburner’s career followed a bittersweet pattern. In Season 6 he and NRG once again topped the North American league table and then qualified for the World Championship in Las Vegas, only to fall in the first round of the playoffs and finish tied for seventh. In Season 7 they repeated as North American league champions, extended his streak of appearances at every RLCS World Championship, and then finished in the five to eight range at the final LAN of his playing career.
By mid 2019, years of being North America’s most consistent presence without a world title had taken their toll. In June, Nunez published a TwitLonger announcing that he would retire as a player after one final tournament at DreamHack Valencia. Coverage of that announcement stressed how much he had meant to the game that Psyonix had built and how his career had shaped the early RLCS era, even noting that his parents had not been fully supportive at first and that he had worked through those doubts to travel the world through Rocket League.
DreamHack Valencia in July 2019 became the farewell stop he had promised. NRG finished second at the event, adding one more major LAN grand final to his list of results. Shortly afterward, NRG signed Pierre “Turbopolsa” Silfver to replace him, a move the official RLCS site described as one of the biggest roster changes in the history of the league.
By the time he stepped away from competition, EsportsEarnings records show that Jayson “Fireburner” Nunez had earned just under one hundred forty thousand dollars in prize money across eighty three tournaments, with the vast majority of that total coming during his three year run under the NRG banner.
Coaching Version1 And Returning To NRG
Retirement from playing did not mean leaving the scene. In August 2020, Nunez joined Version1 as the organization’s Rocket League coach, taking on a new role just as the RLCS X era began. Liquipedia’s coaching records note that he stayed with Version1 until September 2023, helping guide them through multiple regional events and major appearances while applying the same patient, structure first philosophy that had characterized his own play.
After leaving Version1, he moved back to his old colors. In late 2023, NRG announced that he was rejoining the organization as coach for their Rocket League roster, welcoming him back to the “NRG fam” and putting one of the game’s most respected veterans behind the team he had once captained on stage.
During this coaching period he has also remained part of the community as a streamer and analyst. His X profile lists him as a “7x NA Champion, 2x Major LAN Champion,” a concise summary of the domestic titles and offline trophies that anchor his resume and a reminder that his career is defined by far more than just the one series that got away in London.
Legacy
Today, when fans and commentators talk about the early history of Rocket League esports, Fireburner’s name recurs for several reasons. He was one of the SARPBC veterans who proved that the new game could support a long term competitive scene. He helped turn Kings of Urban into an era defining North American roster, then carried that success into NRG and remained a fixture at every RLCS World Championship from Season 1 through Season 7.
He became a template for the modern third man, combining steady back line defense with suffocating midfield challenges that earned him nicknames like “50/50 god” and “90/10 god.” He set a standard for professionalism and accountability that teammates and journalists alike pointed to when they tried to explain why NRG could survive roster changes and still return to the top of North America year after year.
He also became, through no choice of his own, the face of a particular kind of sporting tragedy: the elite competitor who never quite reaches the absolute summit. Articles ranking the best players to never win the RLCS World Championship place him alongside legends from both regions, but they also acknowledge that his combination of domestic success, longevity, and near misses is unique.
From the perspective of esports history, though, his story does not end with that disappointment. Jayson “Fireburner” Nunez remains visible as a coach and community figure, still shaping North American Rocket League years after he first beat Cosmic Aftershock in an early MLG bracket. His legacy is measured not just in trophies, but in the consistency, structure, and calm decision making that he brought to every team he touched, and in the generations of players who learned to see midfield challenges and smart rotations as tools of championship caliber play.