In the first year of Rocket League esports, a few names defined the shape of the scene. In Europe, FlipSid3 Tactics and We Dem Girlz built a reputation for ruthless consistency. In North America, iBUYPOWER Cosmic towered over early brackets. Somewhere just behind them, appearing in weekly ESL brackets and early online leagues, a new trio began to push the established order.
They called themselves Kings of Urban.
From August 2015 until the fall of 2016, Kings of Urban existed only in Rocket League. The team never branched into other games, never became a multi title brand, and never survived long enough to enjoy the franchise era. Instead it lived entirely inside an experimental twelve month window, during which it helped define what top level North American Rocket League looked like, and then disappeared into a larger organization.
This is the story of Kings of Urban as a Rocket League team, from its formation in late 2015 through the Rocket League Central Pro League, the first season of the Rocket League Championship Series, and the roster’s final transfer to NRG Esports.
Formation and the Cosmic Shadow
Kings of Urban formed in August 2015, just weeks after Rocket League’s release. North American player Jayson “Fireburner” Nunez took the lead in building the roster. In later interviews, he described his goal as simple: find the three best players in North America who were not already on Cosmic Aftershock, the early superteam that included Cameron “Kronovi” Bills and had become the measuring stick for everyone else.
The original Kings of Urban lineup brought together Fireburner with Cody “Gambit” Dover and Kyle “Kyle Masc” Mascitelli. They came from the small but passionate Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars community and stepped into Rocket League’s earliest tournaments almost immediately. The team cut its teeth in ESL weekly cups and small online events, frequently running into Cosmic Aftershock and closing the gap between the two sides one series at a time.
Within a few months, Kings of Urban began to adjust the roster. By early October 2015, Kyle Masc left and Jacob “Jacob” McDowell joined. Later that month Gambit departed, and on November 4 the team added Caleb “Moses” Nichols as its new third. Those changes produced what many fans remember as the first “classic” Kings of Urban lineup: Fireburner, Jacob, and Moses.
The team’s early goal was not to build a brand. It was to catch Cosmic Aftershock, then pass them.
Breaking Cosmic’s Armor
Kings of Urban’s first defining moment came in Major League Gaming’s Pro League Season 1. In the MLG Pro League Season 1 group stage (Division A), the team fought through a division that included Swarm Gaming, FlipSid3 Tactics, and others, finishing with a winning record and a positive goal differential.
What made the run famous was not the record on paper. It was a single series against iBUYPOWER Cosmic that changed the way people talked about North American Rocket League.
In the MLG North American Finals, Cosmic entered having won 49 consecutive series across the season. ESPN later called what happened next the “shot heard around the world.” With the score tied and the clock at zero, Kyle Masc launched a final, desperate shot that dropped into the net after time expired. That goal gave Kings of Urban the series and handed Cosmic a rare defeat at the end of the bracket.
The upset was not an isolated fluke. In the subsequent international MLG bracket, Kings of Urban met iBUYPOWER Cosmic again and knocked them out a second time, reinforcing the idea that Cosmic could be beaten and that a new North American contender had arrived.
For an early scene that had largely assumed Cosmic would win nearly everything, Kings of Urban became the first North American team to consistently challenge that assumption. Their style helped. With Fireburner’s reliable striking, Jacob’s aggressive aerial play, and Moses’s steady third man presence, Kings of Urban played a fast, offense heavy game that punished teams whenever they lost control of the ball.
North American Reign in the Rocket League Central Pro League
The next major stage for Kings of Urban was the Rocket League Central Pro League Season 1, a global online league organized by Rocket League Central that began in January 2016. The league featured separate European and North American divisions and then a combined playoff bracket.
In North America, Kings of Urban delivered one of the most dominant regular season performances of early Rocket League. The standings for the NA group stage show Kings finishing with a 22–8 record, a 73 percent win rate, and a goal differential of plus 41, the best mark in the region.
Community coverage from that season underlined how overwhelming they were when they gained control of a series. Coverage from Rocket League Central noted a recurring pattern: when Kings of Urban scored the first goal in a game, they were difficult to dislodge. In other words, once they struck first, they did not often let the game slip away.
Weekly recaps described Kings as the team everyone else in North America had to chase. In one Week 4 summary, Kings sat at 17–3 with a plus 34 goal differential and held the top spot above iBUYPOWER Cosmic in both standings and community power rankings. That same recap referred to their matches as the ones that decided first place, reinforcing their status as the region’s new standard.
In the international playoff bracket, Kings of Urban entered as the top seed from North America. ESPN’s later history of the team noted that they finished the regular season at the top of the NA table but fell in the playoff semifinals, a result that nudged them back into the familiar position of second in the world rather than clear number one. Even so, the RLC Pro League solidified Kings of Urban as North America’s most stable and successful roster heading into the upcoming world championship series.
Rebuilding Around SadJunior
As the Rocket League Championship Series approached in 2016, Kings of Urban made their most important roster change. In early April, the team parted ways with Moses and added Kais “SadJunior” Zehri, a move that surprised many observers after the trio’s strong performances in the RLC Pro League. The team also brought in Shane “Vafele” Heard as a substitute around the same time.
The change reflected a specific goal. According to Ian Faletti’s long form feature on Kings of Urban, the swap was made with one purpose in mind: winning the RLCS. With SadJunior’s aggressive mindset and strong shooting, Kings of Urban hoped to increase their ceiling in high pressure moments, even at the cost of breaking up a successful existing core.
The new lineup preserved the basic structure of the team. Fireburner remained the captain and backbone, Jacob retained his role as a high flying playmaker, and SadJunior provided a third scoring threat who could rotate forward or back depending on the flow of play. The result was an even more explosive, offense oriented version of Kings of Urban, one that moved into RLCS Season 1 as the consensus top team in North America.
Kings of Urban in RLCS Season 1
The first season of the Rocket League Championship Series in 2016 featured two North American online league splits that led into an online “final” and then a live international finals at Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles. Kings of Urban, now fielding Fireburner, Jacob, and SadJunior with Fl0w listed as substitute, were central to that story from start to finish.
In North American Qualifier 1, Kings of Urban finished second in both league play and the playoffs behind iBUYPOWER Cosmic. That consistent runner up position did not feel like a failure. It positioned Kings as the clear number two and set expectations that they would only need a small improvement to take the top seed in the second split.
Qualifier 2 became the definitive online chapter of their season. The ESPN feature on the team describes how, after a relatively disappointing fourth seed finish in the league stage, Kings of Urban made their roster gamble look wise during the online bracket. In their opening match, they defeated surprise league winner Lucky Bounce, whose aggressive offense had turned heads throughout the split. In the final, they met Exodus, the new team of their former teammate Moses.
The series against Exodus went the full distance. Kings of Urban won 4–3 in what all three players later called their proudest moment, claiming the top seed from North America for the RLCS Live Finals. That victory gave them the official recognition to match their community reputation: Kings of Urban entered the first world championship as the number one team from their region.
Statistically, their RLCS group stage performance underlined how dangerous they were at their peak. ESPN’s recap of the North American league shows Kings finishing with a 19–16 game record and an underwhelming fourth place in the final standings, yet still posting some of the best offensive numbers in the region. Fireburner ranked third in goals, Jacob ranked second in assists, and SadJunior appeared in the top ten in both goals and assists, a rare three way offensive threat.
The same article observed that Kings of Urban came into the league as the number one team in the community power rankings and left the group stage in fourth, a sign that while their high octane style could overwhelm opponents, it also left them vulnerable in long formats when they failed to convert pressure into wins.
Avalon Hollywood and the LAN that Got Away
On August 6 and 7, 2016, eight teams gathered at the Avalon Hollywood in California for the first Rocket League Championship Series Live International Finals. Psyonix’s official recap of the event described the weekend as the largest Rocket League broadcast to date, with over a million viewers tuning in and a sold out crowd in the theater.
Kings of Urban arrived as the number one North American seed, playing essentially on home soil. In a pre event feature, ESPN emphasized their confidence and their reliance on emotion. Fireburner spoke about how a North American crowd would hype them up and help them play better, while Jacob described the team as “emotional” and said they fed on the energy of the audience.
The tournament did not unfold the way they imagined. In the opening round, Kings of Urban faced Europe’s fourth seed, The Flying Dutchmen. Psyonix’s recap called the result “the biggest shocker of the day.” Rather than advancing comfortably, the top North American seed fell in its first match and dropped to the lower bracket.
There, their path did not get easier. Kings of Urban ran into FlipSid3 Tactics, the European juggernaut that had already built a reputation as the best team in the world. The official recap notes that FlipSid3 put Kings out in the lower bracket, eliminating a team that many observers had picked to win the entire tournament. RL Esports Wiki records Kings of Urban’s placing at the event as tied for 7th–8th with 1,100 dollars in winnings.
For a team that had spent months oscillating between first and second in every ranking, the quick exit at the first RLCS LAN became the central disappointment of their history. The Kings entered Avalon Hollywood with the weight of North American expectations on their shoulders and left as a cautionary tale about how volatile early Rocket League could be in front of a live audience.
Final Months and the NRG Acquisition
The RLCS Live Finals did not immediately end Kings of Urban’s run. Through the rest of the summer and early fall of 2016, the team continued to enter online tournaments and weekly cups. The RL Esports record of their results shows a string of victories in Rocket Royale weeklies, including multiple first place finishes in July and August with the familiar trio of Fireburner, Jacob, and SadJunior.
Esports Earnings, which aggregates prize data, credits Kings of Urban with 6,050 dollars in Rocket League winnings across fourteen tournaments, all in 2016. While small by modern standards, those earnings reflect the environment in which the team competed. At that time, most Rocket League prize pools were measured in hundreds or a few thousand dollars, and the RLCS Season 1 LAN prize pool was 55,000 dollars in total.
As Psyonix and Twitch prepared RLCS Season 2, Kings of Urban entered the North American open qualifiers once more, playing under the same banner in mid September. Their days as an independent team tag, however, were numbered. On October 1, 2016, NRG Esports acquired the Kings of Urban roster. RL Esports records the date as the point when Fireburner, Jacob, and SadJunior left Kings of Urban, and NRG’s own team history notes that they signed the roster after its strong finish in RLCS Season 1.
From that moment forward, any achievements by that trio belonged to NRG, not to Kings of Urban. The Kings of Urban name is listed as disbanded as of October 2016 in both wiki style records and has not returned to Rocket League since.
Identity and Legacy in Rocket League History
Although the Kings of Urban name existed in Rocket League for little more than a year, its impact on the early esport still echoes in how fans talk about that era.
First, Kings of Urban provided the clearest early challenge to iBUYPOWER Cosmic’s dominance in North America. The zero second goal from Kyle Masc in the 2015 MLG North American Finals, preserved in VODs and celebrated later in Psyonix’s own community spotlight, gave Rocket League one of its first truly iconic clutch moments and proved that Cosmic could be beaten at the height of its powers.
Second, the team’s record in the Rocket League Central Pro League defined what a North American powerhouse looked like in early 2016. A 22–8 league record, the best goal differential in the region, and their ability to seize momentum and keep it showed a team that thrived when it could take control of a series and never let go.
Third, Kings of Urban’s journey through RLCS Season 1 illustrated both the promise and the volatility of early Rocket League esports. They entered the season as the top team in community power rankings, finished the group stage in fourth, then fought their way to the top North American seed for LAN by beating the upstart Lucky Bounce and Exodus online. At Avalon Hollywood, they experienced the other side of that volatility when they were upset by The Flying Dutchmen and eliminated by FlipSid3 Tactics on the first day.
Finally, Kings of Urban helped set a pattern that would repeat throughout Rocket League’s history. Their acquisition by NRG Esports foreshadowed a world where successful independent lineups often became the foundation of larger organizations’ entries into the scene. The roster that began as a self built trio under the Kings of Urban banner went on to compete at the highest levels for years, but the original name stayed behind in the game’s first chapter.
In that sense, Kings of Urban’s place in Rocket League history is both narrow and distinctive. The name existed only for Rocket League, and only for a short time, but within that window it challenged early dynasties, produced some of the esport’s first unforgettable moments, and helped define what it meant to be a top North American team at the dawn of the RLCS era.