OOC: So this has been quite the project over the last few weeks. I'm very proud of it and everything it represents, I very much hope you enjoy it. 
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Before Jack Rogue was one of Precision’s most popular ever stars, a former Intercontinental Champion and the third ever Precision Champion, he first came to prominence on Sony Storm. He arrived in April 2015, after piquing scouts’ interest with his popularity and charisma. In his first few matches for the company, he wore now notorious blue attire, very different to the black and red gear he is known to sport today.
“It gives me a good laugh today, but that gear was awful. I don’t know who let me out there wearing it, but they shouldn’t have. It makes me cringe to look at it now.”
Despite this, and especially after it was changed, he very quickly gained the favour of the audience with his powerful words and endearing determination in the ring. He was always a skilled technician, and had ability that has since taken him to the top of Precision, but initially lacked the know-how and knack of winning matches. Critics blamed his principles and affable, easy-going manner, but for months on end Jack couldn’t buy a win. Popularity was never something he had to worry about, though, as in a promotion plagued by villainous authority figures, including Ian Jaxs and Harrison Payne, he stood by a goal of removing corruption from the show. In his first match on the program, he teamed up with the man who would, over two years later, become his greatest rival, Andersen Vega. Together, they were beaten by a team spearheaded by the corrupt General Manager of the time, Ian Jaxs. Jack’s first major match came on Sony Storm’s SummerSlam, where he faced Mike Thunder for the company’s United States Championship. Thunder was victorious, capturing his first singles championship at the unseasoned Rogue’s expense. This was an early landmark on what would become a famed losing streak, as Jack would go 0-12 on Sony Storm before picking up his first win.
“It tore me up inside. I questioned my abilities, it cut me deep. It started to get to a point where the Jack everyone was expecting, that I’d arrived as, was a façade. It made me a much less lively person, in and out of the ring.”
He was, however, being bested in close contests by elite opposition. From Danny Jacobs (later of IWT fame), to the infamously talented but abrasive and disrespectful Charlie Sigma, to former World Champion and General Manager, Harrison Payne, to multiple future rivals, including The Psycho, Jordan Bull and Andersen Vega, Rogue fell to much of Sony Storm’s roster in 2015, without ever achieving his first victory. Finally, in his second bout with The Psycho - a sadistic man with a troubled soul and a leg breaking submission hold - and his thirteenth Sony Storm match, Jack won for the first time since breaking onto the big stage. It was a moment of jubilation for his fans, but Rogue himself wasn’t so sure.
“It felt like a fluke. That was what my haters said too, so I couldn’t let slip that I believed it, but it didn’t feel like it was this moment where everything clicked, that I’d been talking about. It was a good moment, but it took time before I’d really be on the level of everyone else. I capitalised on Psycho’s problems, it wasn’t a win because of me.”
Sure enough, victory was the exception, and defeat continued to be the rule. Despite his lack of in ring success, after six months of wrestling for Sony Storm, Rogue was becoming one of the most popular stars on the roster. He picked up just two more wins during that season of the program, finishing it with in excess of twenty defeats. His losses continued to frustrate him, but he was still able to be externally optimistic as he began his second season. He immediately locked horns with the anti-audience, arrogant Nathan Carraway. The pair went back and forth with an epic war of words over a number of weeks, and traded victories before a final, decisive match at the first major show of the season, Road to the Throne. Rogue was narrowly defeated in one of his best performances yet, but he was infuriated by the fact that Carraway never rose further in Sony Storm, instead leaving the company and the sport just two months after their match.
After this defeat, Jack moved on to Money in the Bank, which he believed could’ve been a career turning point as he would compete in the Ladder Match for a world championship match at a time of his choosing. He was wiped out of the match, along with Carraway, after an epic fall to the canvas from the top of a ladder, and Precision’s own “Amazing” Chris Young would go on to walk out victorious. However, he would never get his title opportunity, and Rogue would never be able to turn his momentum around in Sony Storm. The company suddenly folded as the owners voted to liquidate the promotion, the program was abruptly dropped and the talent had to be released.
“It’s one of my biggest regrets, that I never got the opportunity to climb Sony Storm’s ranks in that second season. Not only that, but I promised on my first day to change the corruption that ran that show. I never got to fulfil that promise before that same corruption destroyed the whole promotion.”
Mere weeks after the end of Sony Storm, Saturday Night Precision was founded through the collaboration of much of Sony Storm’s staff, and with the finances of Ryan and Robert Blake. Many of Storm’s headline stars jumped together to Precision, to continue their work in a similar environment and finish what they had started with their previous employer. Rogue arrived with a very similar promise to that which he went to Sony Storm with, and initially had a similar level of success, as he was once again the perennial loser. Slowly, though, his wins became more regular and the fan favourite began to build momentum, proving that he could have made the impact he had wanted to on Sony Storm had he had time. However, Jack then fell victim to a statement assault from behind by his earliest ally, making his Precision arrival: Andersen Vega. He was the first man to be beaten down with the baseball bat that would become Vega’s signature, as Rogue was used for Andersen to announce his Precision arrival.
“He was the first guy to take me under his wing in Sony Storm. He taught me a lot of stuff about the big stage, under the bright lights, and there was no bigger defender of the people than Andersen, back then. Then he got taken out by The Scat at WrestleMania, and he thought that the world turned his back on him. I was utterly shocked that my first friend, and one of my best, would turn his back on what we fought for together: honesty, fairness and pride.”
That same night, the self-proclaimed “King of Precision” attacked Alice Xander with the same weapon, severely concussing him, hospitalising him and taking him out of action for several months. Vega would go on to use the exposure to get a shot at and win the Iron Man Championship, thus claiming Precision gold before Rogue in just a few weeks. Andersen taunted Jack with this, claiming that he “made” Rogue, and the two were set to meet for the Iron Man Championship at Fully Loaded a few weeks later. In the lead up, Jack beat the dominant Buster Gates on Precision by DQ, as “Mr Money” brutally attacked him with a steel chair, finishing with a deadlift powerbomb through the hard metal. Vega would then come out and humiliate the defenceless Rogue with a Pedigree, and a short lived alliance known as “The Monarchy” was formed. It featured the Iron Man Champion, Vega, the World Heavyweight Champion, Gates, and Ryan Blake, then European Champion, thus being the only faction ever to hold “all the gold” in Sony Storm or Precision history. The trio’s egos, inevitably, interfered with each other, but the group inadvertently boosted Jack’s popularity as he was viewed as a valiant underdog in the face of impossible odds. At Fully Loaded, Rogue drew 3-3 with Vega, allowing the champion to retain without beating Jack. Andersen offered Rogue another opportunity to win the title from him, on the condition that if Vega won, he would win Jack’s Precision contract, with the power to terminate it if he wished.
“It was maybe the greatest setback of my career. I was absolutely in a box – I had to take the match because otherwise I’d be backing down, and as a role model I couldn’t do that. Then when he won the contract, I could’ve just quit, but I wanted people to learn to ride out bad circumstances, not just quit. It was hell under Vega, I hated every minute of it. It was like torture. But the self-imposed shame if I had quit would’ve been greater.”
The next week on Precision, Vega defeated Rogue 2-1, and Jack became an employee of his now nemesis. The Iron Man Champion completely subjugated Rogue. He forced Jack to do his every whim: from fetching him drinks and doing his laundry, to forcing him to participate in Andersen’s assaults and beat-downs of Precision stars, to artificially tanning his skin and dying his hair against his will, because Vega didn’t like his pallor and red hair. Rogue continued to compete on Precision, and used his plentiful frustration to earn wins over Mike Thunder and Chris “Doomsday” Parks, as well as taking them out on interviewer “The Reagmaster”, who goaded Jack into superkicking him off his chair during an interview with him and Vega.
This all led to the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view, where his improved performances earned Jack the chance to face the Intercontinental Champion, Joseph Diamond, inside the Cell for the title. They fought a brutal epic, with weapons aplenty, before Diamond suplexed Rogue through the Cell wall, and goaded the fan favourite up the side of the structure. When Jack climbed, spurred on by the crowd, he was caught by the champion and pitched off the side, falling twenty feet and crashing through the announcers’ table.
“It was the greatest pain I’ve ever felt in my life. I was lucky I didn’t slip a disk in my back, due to the way I landed, but the impact felt like I was hit by a train. It was that moment that pushed me off the edge of my sanity. I got it into my head that I had to make everyone feel that kind of pain, including the audience that had always supported me. I wanted to do that by taking Precision from them, by taking everyone out. It was a dark time. It was like I wasn’t really there, these sadistic thoughts were someone else’s, living in my body. To this day I’m still working it all out.”
After his fall, Jack climbed back to the top of the Cell, stomped a hole into the roof and superkicked Diamond through it. Despite this, though, Rogue was still on the losing end, Joseph retaining his title with the Unbreakable Facebreaker. Andersen Vega defended his title against Antonio Stark on the same show, and after retaining called Jack out from the crown to attack Stark. After he followed the order of a superkick, though, he proceeded to launch into a maddened assault of his own volition, snapping under the weight of his constant defeats, the emotional torture of Vega’s dominion, and the fall from the Cell. To explain his actions, Rogue gave a now famous speech the next week, with terrifying, spluttering delivery, detailing the twisted perspective his psychosis had impressed onto him. This included a disregarding of rules, written and not, a hatred of all other wrestlers and disdain and bitterness towards his former fans. He adopted a black half-mask he wore in “a place where there were no lines”, and it became the symbol of his new, vicious, animalistic side.
Vega, still Rogue’s employer, immediately took a dislike to the wildness of his new attitude. He sought to clear Jack’s head with a sparring session that only led to the now reckless Rogue clotheslining his own boss with shocking force. After this, Jack was able to goad Vega into giving up on his self-proclaimed effort to “improve” him, by putting his contract on the line in a No Disqualification match, which Rogue won with a new Cradle DDT finisher he christened “Annihilation”. Now free of all “chains” and “red tape”, from rules to morals to Vega’s ownership of his contract, Jack, psychotic and incensed, began a rampage throughout Precision. He began viciously dismantling opponents in and after his matches, to the horror of his previously loyal supporters. His frustration was ramped to another level when, having set his sights on the Elimination Chamber match for the World Heavyweight Championship, he was bested in a qualifier by fellow Sony Storm alum Noah Styles. With his first option for the first ever Wrestle Dynasty now off limits, Rogue resumed hostilities with Joseph Diamond and forced his way into the Intercontinental Championship match along with another Diamond rival in Bill Bronson. Jack, after battering both men with a steel chair, won the triple threat by pinning Bronson off Annihilation.
“Looking back on that now, I don’t know how to feel. I’m proud that I had that moment on that stage, and I finally had what I had pursued before I went insane. But I had cheated, assaulted, done all manner of awful things to get there. It's sad that I look back almost shamefully on my first championship win, and on the greatest possible stage.”
Wrestle Dynasty concluded Precision's first season, and Rogue returned for the second in no improved mental condition and championship in hand. However, he appeared in the two month break to have lost all his momentum, and lost in successive weeks to Alex Hade and Jason St. Pierre. Both men were placed in Jack's defence of his title in a TLC match at the pay-per-view of the same name, along with Jordan Bull. However, Bull was injured on the night due to an attack by a mystery assailant, and so Rogue defended in a triple threat TLC and not a Fatal Four Way. These improved odds weren't enough to save Jack’s title, though, as JSP fought off Hade for long enough to bring the belt down. The next week, Rogue took out his frustrations on the new champion’s opponent, Alexander Diamond. He attacked him after a match with JSP, and crushed his windpipe with a sadistic arrangement of a steel chair around the neck, smacked by another. Diamond was hospitalised and just survived his injury, but Rogue showed no remorse for his near homicide.
“It scares me when I think back to the twisted joy that filled me as I set that chair up and hit it. I was a shark, watching this helpless little fish bleeding into the water and wanting so badly to kill it, to tear it in half. It shocks me to my core every time I remember that that other side of me is capable of that.”
Jordan Bull called out his pre-TLC attacker the next week on Precision, and it turned out to have been the former champion, Rogue, in a desperate effort to preserve his title. Bull, in his determination to make Jack pay for his serious arm injury as a result of the attack, challenged him to a best of seven series with a different stipulation on each match. In the first match of the series, Rogue unveiled a vicious new reverse armbar submission hold, taking advantage of Jordan’s injury and forcing him into an immediate submission for fear that Jack could’ve torn a muscle or popped his shoulder. The second match of the series took place at Backlash with No Holds Barred, and Bull was able to use his weapons expertise to pin Jack, despite wrestling at less than 100%. Rogue was despairing and frustrated at the result, which caused him to question his new path for the first time. This gave us the first idea of his condition, as in that moment he removed his mask and, through the confusion wondered about whether he should be doing what he was doing. Following Backlash, Jack attended therapy and appeared at the next Precision apparently with his old attitude. He apologised for the harm he had caused, and explained that he was close to a diagnosis of a disorder related to Dual Personality, brought on by emotional stress and severe physical trauma. That week, Rogue was beaten by new arrival Golden Dragon, and showed the vulnerability to anger that came with his condition, as he assaulted a referee after the match, before, moments later, showing intense remorse and shock at his own actions. Clearly, Jack was in need of more counselling and went to therapy again the next week. However, while there he was led out of the session by new Precision arrival, the self-professed “Empress of Fear”, Ivy Hale, who proceeded to exploit Rogue’s mental vulnerability and indoctrinate him as her “soldier”.
“She was so… entrancing. I’ve been asked if I was seduced, but it really wasn’t a sexual thing. She just seemed so in control to me, at that moment. She was an empress in every sense – majestic, regal, powerful. She convinced me that this therapy, which I had built up in my head as this magic cure to my condition, wouldn’t work, as it hadn’t for her. After that, I can’t imagine it was hard to persuade me that she, in fact, had the real answers. I was totally taken in. It felt like she knew me better than I did.”
The next week, Rogue returned to face Jordan Bull in a submission match, the third of the now tied series. To the horror of the crowd, the previously apologetic Jack now had his mask back on, and was being led to the ring by Hale. Rogue won the match with the new submission hold, and the match for UK Rampage, in Bull’s hometown of London and both mens’ homeland of the UK, was set as a Tables match. Jack attacked Jordan from behind with a chair before the match began, after a coordinated distraction from Hale. Bull fought valiantly, though, and despite the efforts of Ivy to prevent it, jumped from a ladder with an elbow drop, further damaging his right arm, putting Rogue through the table and tying the series 2-2. Cracks would begin to show between Ivy and Jack in the next few weeks, as it was all Hale could do to prevent him questioning the motives she had impressed on him. Rogue won a steel cage match on Precision by door escape to make it 3-2 before Bull sent the series to a seventh contest with victory in an Iron Man match at the Viewer’s Choice pay-per-view. The seventh contest was made a number one contender’s match for the Precision Championship, and the title match contract was suspended above the ring in a ladder match. Jack was victorious, and in winning had another moment of reflection that allowed him to fight his psychosis once more, walking away from an attempted beat-down of Bull started by Ivy Hale, and returning to therapy. Following this, and now with his first ever world championship match secured, Rogue returned to therapy with new lessons learned about him and set his sights on Bad Blood, where his former tormenter and then Precision Champion, Andersen Vega, awaited him.
“Vega is one of the best of all time, so I knew I had to be ready. I threw all of myself into preparing for this match. In the previous two years I had been through so much, had so much determination, frustration, anguish to draw on. I walked into Bad Blood better than Andersen, or anyone else, had thought I could ever be.”
He uploaded videos of his therapy and his training to the Precision YouTube channel in the build up to the match, and also requested a Two out of Three Falls match, which Vega accepted. At Bad Blood, Rogue won a 15-minute first fall with a superkick out of mid-air, and then won the third with a second superkick, despite a baseball bat beat-down and Avalanche Pedigree from Vega to tie the falls earlier. The reaction to the win was rapturous, and Jack’s reign as Precision Champion is set to change Precision well into the future, as he has set his sights on purging Precision of the “evil” and corruption that led to the end of Sony Storm. However long it lasts and whoever it defeats, Rogue’s reign as Precision Champion is validation at the end of a long and tumultuous rise to the mountaintop, physically and mentally. It is the nature of the champion’s condition that no-one will be able to predict what is to come but, for now, the era of Rogue seems bright.
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Before Jack Rogue was one of Precision’s most popular ever stars, a former Intercontinental Champion and the third ever Precision Champion, he first came to prominence on Sony Storm. He arrived in April 2015, after piquing scouts’ interest with his popularity and charisma. In his first few matches for the company, he wore now notorious blue attire, very different to the black and red gear he is known to sport today.
“It gives me a good laugh today, but that gear was awful. I don’t know who let me out there wearing it, but they shouldn’t have. It makes me cringe to look at it now.”
Despite this, and especially after it was changed, he very quickly gained the favour of the audience with his powerful words and endearing determination in the ring. He was always a skilled technician, and had ability that has since taken him to the top of Precision, but initially lacked the know-how and knack of winning matches. Critics blamed his principles and affable, easy-going manner, but for months on end Jack couldn’t buy a win. Popularity was never something he had to worry about, though, as in a promotion plagued by villainous authority figures, including Ian Jaxs and Harrison Payne, he stood by a goal of removing corruption from the show. In his first match on the program, he teamed up with the man who would, over two years later, become his greatest rival, Andersen Vega. Together, they were beaten by a team spearheaded by the corrupt General Manager of the time, Ian Jaxs. Jack’s first major match came on Sony Storm’s SummerSlam, where he faced Mike Thunder for the company’s United States Championship. Thunder was victorious, capturing his first singles championship at the unseasoned Rogue’s expense. This was an early landmark on what would become a famed losing streak, as Jack would go 0-12 on Sony Storm before picking up his first win.
“It tore me up inside. I questioned my abilities, it cut me deep. It started to get to a point where the Jack everyone was expecting, that I’d arrived as, was a façade. It made me a much less lively person, in and out of the ring.”
He was, however, being bested in close contests by elite opposition. From Danny Jacobs (later of IWT fame), to the infamously talented but abrasive and disrespectful Charlie Sigma, to former World Champion and General Manager, Harrison Payne, to multiple future rivals, including The Psycho, Jordan Bull and Andersen Vega, Rogue fell to much of Sony Storm’s roster in 2015, without ever achieving his first victory. Finally, in his second bout with The Psycho - a sadistic man with a troubled soul and a leg breaking submission hold - and his thirteenth Sony Storm match, Jack won for the first time since breaking onto the big stage. It was a moment of jubilation for his fans, but Rogue himself wasn’t so sure.
“It felt like a fluke. That was what my haters said too, so I couldn’t let slip that I believed it, but it didn’t feel like it was this moment where everything clicked, that I’d been talking about. It was a good moment, but it took time before I’d really be on the level of everyone else. I capitalised on Psycho’s problems, it wasn’t a win because of me.”
Sure enough, victory was the exception, and defeat continued to be the rule. Despite his lack of in ring success, after six months of wrestling for Sony Storm, Rogue was becoming one of the most popular stars on the roster. He picked up just two more wins during that season of the program, finishing it with in excess of twenty defeats. His losses continued to frustrate him, but he was still able to be externally optimistic as he began his second season. He immediately locked horns with the anti-audience, arrogant Nathan Carraway. The pair went back and forth with an epic war of words over a number of weeks, and traded victories before a final, decisive match at the first major show of the season, Road to the Throne. Rogue was narrowly defeated in one of his best performances yet, but he was infuriated by the fact that Carraway never rose further in Sony Storm, instead leaving the company and the sport just two months after their match.
After this defeat, Jack moved on to Money in the Bank, which he believed could’ve been a career turning point as he would compete in the Ladder Match for a world championship match at a time of his choosing. He was wiped out of the match, along with Carraway, after an epic fall to the canvas from the top of a ladder, and Precision’s own “Amazing” Chris Young would go on to walk out victorious. However, he would never get his title opportunity, and Rogue would never be able to turn his momentum around in Sony Storm. The company suddenly folded as the owners voted to liquidate the promotion, the program was abruptly dropped and the talent had to be released.
“It’s one of my biggest regrets, that I never got the opportunity to climb Sony Storm’s ranks in that second season. Not only that, but I promised on my first day to change the corruption that ran that show. I never got to fulfil that promise before that same corruption destroyed the whole promotion.”
Mere weeks after the end of Sony Storm, Saturday Night Precision was founded through the collaboration of much of Sony Storm’s staff, and with the finances of Ryan and Robert Blake. Many of Storm’s headline stars jumped together to Precision, to continue their work in a similar environment and finish what they had started with their previous employer. Rogue arrived with a very similar promise to that which he went to Sony Storm with, and initially had a similar level of success, as he was once again the perennial loser. Slowly, though, his wins became more regular and the fan favourite began to build momentum, proving that he could have made the impact he had wanted to on Sony Storm had he had time. However, Jack then fell victim to a statement assault from behind by his earliest ally, making his Precision arrival: Andersen Vega. He was the first man to be beaten down with the baseball bat that would become Vega’s signature, as Rogue was used for Andersen to announce his Precision arrival.
“He was the first guy to take me under his wing in Sony Storm. He taught me a lot of stuff about the big stage, under the bright lights, and there was no bigger defender of the people than Andersen, back then. Then he got taken out by The Scat at WrestleMania, and he thought that the world turned his back on him. I was utterly shocked that my first friend, and one of my best, would turn his back on what we fought for together: honesty, fairness and pride.”
That same night, the self-proclaimed “King of Precision” attacked Alice Xander with the same weapon, severely concussing him, hospitalising him and taking him out of action for several months. Vega would go on to use the exposure to get a shot at and win the Iron Man Championship, thus claiming Precision gold before Rogue in just a few weeks. Andersen taunted Jack with this, claiming that he “made” Rogue, and the two were set to meet for the Iron Man Championship at Fully Loaded a few weeks later. In the lead up, Jack beat the dominant Buster Gates on Precision by DQ, as “Mr Money” brutally attacked him with a steel chair, finishing with a deadlift powerbomb through the hard metal. Vega would then come out and humiliate the defenceless Rogue with a Pedigree, and a short lived alliance known as “The Monarchy” was formed. It featured the Iron Man Champion, Vega, the World Heavyweight Champion, Gates, and Ryan Blake, then European Champion, thus being the only faction ever to hold “all the gold” in Sony Storm or Precision history. The trio’s egos, inevitably, interfered with each other, but the group inadvertently boosted Jack’s popularity as he was viewed as a valiant underdog in the face of impossible odds. At Fully Loaded, Rogue drew 3-3 with Vega, allowing the champion to retain without beating Jack. Andersen offered Rogue another opportunity to win the title from him, on the condition that if Vega won, he would win Jack’s Precision contract, with the power to terminate it if he wished.
“It was maybe the greatest setback of my career. I was absolutely in a box – I had to take the match because otherwise I’d be backing down, and as a role model I couldn’t do that. Then when he won the contract, I could’ve just quit, but I wanted people to learn to ride out bad circumstances, not just quit. It was hell under Vega, I hated every minute of it. It was like torture. But the self-imposed shame if I had quit would’ve been greater.”
The next week on Precision, Vega defeated Rogue 2-1, and Jack became an employee of his now nemesis. The Iron Man Champion completely subjugated Rogue. He forced Jack to do his every whim: from fetching him drinks and doing his laundry, to forcing him to participate in Andersen’s assaults and beat-downs of Precision stars, to artificially tanning his skin and dying his hair against his will, because Vega didn’t like his pallor and red hair. Rogue continued to compete on Precision, and used his plentiful frustration to earn wins over Mike Thunder and Chris “Doomsday” Parks, as well as taking them out on interviewer “The Reagmaster”, who goaded Jack into superkicking him off his chair during an interview with him and Vega.
This all led to the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view, where his improved performances earned Jack the chance to face the Intercontinental Champion, Joseph Diamond, inside the Cell for the title. They fought a brutal epic, with weapons aplenty, before Diamond suplexed Rogue through the Cell wall, and goaded the fan favourite up the side of the structure. When Jack climbed, spurred on by the crowd, he was caught by the champion and pitched off the side, falling twenty feet and crashing through the announcers’ table.
“It was the greatest pain I’ve ever felt in my life. I was lucky I didn’t slip a disk in my back, due to the way I landed, but the impact felt like I was hit by a train. It was that moment that pushed me off the edge of my sanity. I got it into my head that I had to make everyone feel that kind of pain, including the audience that had always supported me. I wanted to do that by taking Precision from them, by taking everyone out. It was a dark time. It was like I wasn’t really there, these sadistic thoughts were someone else’s, living in my body. To this day I’m still working it all out.”
After his fall, Jack climbed back to the top of the Cell, stomped a hole into the roof and superkicked Diamond through it. Despite this, though, Rogue was still on the losing end, Joseph retaining his title with the Unbreakable Facebreaker. Andersen Vega defended his title against Antonio Stark on the same show, and after retaining called Jack out from the crown to attack Stark. After he followed the order of a superkick, though, he proceeded to launch into a maddened assault of his own volition, snapping under the weight of his constant defeats, the emotional torture of Vega’s dominion, and the fall from the Cell. To explain his actions, Rogue gave a now famous speech the next week, with terrifying, spluttering delivery, detailing the twisted perspective his psychosis had impressed onto him. This included a disregarding of rules, written and not, a hatred of all other wrestlers and disdain and bitterness towards his former fans. He adopted a black half-mask he wore in “a place where there were no lines”, and it became the symbol of his new, vicious, animalistic side.
Vega, still Rogue’s employer, immediately took a dislike to the wildness of his new attitude. He sought to clear Jack’s head with a sparring session that only led to the now reckless Rogue clotheslining his own boss with shocking force. After this, Jack was able to goad Vega into giving up on his self-proclaimed effort to “improve” him, by putting his contract on the line in a No Disqualification match, which Rogue won with a new Cradle DDT finisher he christened “Annihilation”. Now free of all “chains” and “red tape”, from rules to morals to Vega’s ownership of his contract, Jack, psychotic and incensed, began a rampage throughout Precision. He began viciously dismantling opponents in and after his matches, to the horror of his previously loyal supporters. His frustration was ramped to another level when, having set his sights on the Elimination Chamber match for the World Heavyweight Championship, he was bested in a qualifier by fellow Sony Storm alum Noah Styles. With his first option for the first ever Wrestle Dynasty now off limits, Rogue resumed hostilities with Joseph Diamond and forced his way into the Intercontinental Championship match along with another Diamond rival in Bill Bronson. Jack, after battering both men with a steel chair, won the triple threat by pinning Bronson off Annihilation.
“Looking back on that now, I don’t know how to feel. I’m proud that I had that moment on that stage, and I finally had what I had pursued before I went insane. But I had cheated, assaulted, done all manner of awful things to get there. It's sad that I look back almost shamefully on my first championship win, and on the greatest possible stage.”
Wrestle Dynasty concluded Precision's first season, and Rogue returned for the second in no improved mental condition and championship in hand. However, he appeared in the two month break to have lost all his momentum, and lost in successive weeks to Alex Hade and Jason St. Pierre. Both men were placed in Jack's defence of his title in a TLC match at the pay-per-view of the same name, along with Jordan Bull. However, Bull was injured on the night due to an attack by a mystery assailant, and so Rogue defended in a triple threat TLC and not a Fatal Four Way. These improved odds weren't enough to save Jack’s title, though, as JSP fought off Hade for long enough to bring the belt down. The next week, Rogue took out his frustrations on the new champion’s opponent, Alexander Diamond. He attacked him after a match with JSP, and crushed his windpipe with a sadistic arrangement of a steel chair around the neck, smacked by another. Diamond was hospitalised and just survived his injury, but Rogue showed no remorse for his near homicide.
“It scares me when I think back to the twisted joy that filled me as I set that chair up and hit it. I was a shark, watching this helpless little fish bleeding into the water and wanting so badly to kill it, to tear it in half. It shocks me to my core every time I remember that that other side of me is capable of that.”
Jordan Bull called out his pre-TLC attacker the next week on Precision, and it turned out to have been the former champion, Rogue, in a desperate effort to preserve his title. Bull, in his determination to make Jack pay for his serious arm injury as a result of the attack, challenged him to a best of seven series with a different stipulation on each match. In the first match of the series, Rogue unveiled a vicious new reverse armbar submission hold, taking advantage of Jordan’s injury and forcing him into an immediate submission for fear that Jack could’ve torn a muscle or popped his shoulder. The second match of the series took place at Backlash with No Holds Barred, and Bull was able to use his weapons expertise to pin Jack, despite wrestling at less than 100%. Rogue was despairing and frustrated at the result, which caused him to question his new path for the first time. This gave us the first idea of his condition, as in that moment he removed his mask and, through the confusion wondered about whether he should be doing what he was doing. Following Backlash, Jack attended therapy and appeared at the next Precision apparently with his old attitude. He apologised for the harm he had caused, and explained that he was close to a diagnosis of a disorder related to Dual Personality, brought on by emotional stress and severe physical trauma. That week, Rogue was beaten by new arrival Golden Dragon, and showed the vulnerability to anger that came with his condition, as he assaulted a referee after the match, before, moments later, showing intense remorse and shock at his own actions. Clearly, Jack was in need of more counselling and went to therapy again the next week. However, while there he was led out of the session by new Precision arrival, the self-professed “Empress of Fear”, Ivy Hale, who proceeded to exploit Rogue’s mental vulnerability and indoctrinate him as her “soldier”.
“She was so… entrancing. I’ve been asked if I was seduced, but it really wasn’t a sexual thing. She just seemed so in control to me, at that moment. She was an empress in every sense – majestic, regal, powerful. She convinced me that this therapy, which I had built up in my head as this magic cure to my condition, wouldn’t work, as it hadn’t for her. After that, I can’t imagine it was hard to persuade me that she, in fact, had the real answers. I was totally taken in. It felt like she knew me better than I did.”
The next week, Rogue returned to face Jordan Bull in a submission match, the third of the now tied series. To the horror of the crowd, the previously apologetic Jack now had his mask back on, and was being led to the ring by Hale. Rogue won the match with the new submission hold, and the match for UK Rampage, in Bull’s hometown of London and both mens’ homeland of the UK, was set as a Tables match. Jack attacked Jordan from behind with a chair before the match began, after a coordinated distraction from Hale. Bull fought valiantly, though, and despite the efforts of Ivy to prevent it, jumped from a ladder with an elbow drop, further damaging his right arm, putting Rogue through the table and tying the series 2-2. Cracks would begin to show between Ivy and Jack in the next few weeks, as it was all Hale could do to prevent him questioning the motives she had impressed on him. Rogue won a steel cage match on Precision by door escape to make it 3-2 before Bull sent the series to a seventh contest with victory in an Iron Man match at the Viewer’s Choice pay-per-view. The seventh contest was made a number one contender’s match for the Precision Championship, and the title match contract was suspended above the ring in a ladder match. Jack was victorious, and in winning had another moment of reflection that allowed him to fight his psychosis once more, walking away from an attempted beat-down of Bull started by Ivy Hale, and returning to therapy. Following this, and now with his first ever world championship match secured, Rogue returned to therapy with new lessons learned about him and set his sights on Bad Blood, where his former tormenter and then Precision Champion, Andersen Vega, awaited him.
“Vega is one of the best of all time, so I knew I had to be ready. I threw all of myself into preparing for this match. In the previous two years I had been through so much, had so much determination, frustration, anguish to draw on. I walked into Bad Blood better than Andersen, or anyone else, had thought I could ever be.”
He uploaded videos of his therapy and his training to the Precision YouTube channel in the build up to the match, and also requested a Two out of Three Falls match, which Vega accepted. At Bad Blood, Rogue won a 15-minute first fall with a superkick out of mid-air, and then won the third with a second superkick, despite a baseball bat beat-down and Avalanche Pedigree from Vega to tie the falls earlier. The reaction to the win was rapturous, and Jack’s reign as Precision Champion is set to change Precision well into the future, as he has set his sights on purging Precision of the “evil” and corruption that led to the end of Sony Storm. However long it lasts and whoever it defeats, Rogue’s reign as Precision Champion is validation at the end of a long and tumultuous rise to the mountaintop, physically and mentally. It is the nature of the champion’s condition that no-one will be able to predict what is to come but, for now, the era of Rogue seems bright.