Vegas Sunday: Marner's OT Magic, Raiders Game Day, and a Hard Night for the Legends

LAS VEGAS

This town doesn't do slow Sundays. The Knights needed overtime to finish the Kings on their anniversary night, the Raiders are already in Foxborough, the APEX crowd got a knockout-of-the-year candidate and a retirement speech on the same card, and two of the Strip's longest-running stories — Barry Manilow and Wynn's Awakening — had brutally different weekends. Here's everything that happened.

Marner ends it in overtime on the anniversary night

They threw the Golden Knights a birthday party and then made them work for the present. On the franchise's 10th-anniversary "Welcome to Impossible" night at T-Mobile Arena, Vegas beat the Los Angeles Kings 2-1 in overtime — and it was the new guy who played closer. Mitch Marner ripped a power-play goal 2:40 into OT, just 14 seconds after a tripping call on Scott Laughton gave Vegas a four-on-three, with Mark Stone providing the traffic in front of Darcy Kuemper. Trevor Connelly scored in regulation, Carter Hart made 26 saves, and the Knights improved to 5-1-0 with their fourth straight win — the first team in the NHL to reach 10 points this season.

The Kings are still winless at 0-2-2 — Artemi Panarin scored for them, Kuemper stopped 30 — but nobody at T-Mobile was thinking about that after. This is the part of the season where the Knights usually start banking points while everyone else figures themselves out, and they're ahead of schedule doing it.

Raiders game day: payback on the menu at Foxborough

By the time you're reading this over coffee, kickoff is close: Raiders at Patriots, 10 a.m. PT on CBS. The football case is the tight ends — Brock Bowers keeps drawing the defense's full attention, which keeps opening up Michael Mayer underneath, and the Patriots' secondary is held together with hope: Carlton Davis III and Christian Gonzalez are out, and half the depth chart behind them is questionable or worse.

The real fuel, though, is personal. Josh McDaniels — the coach the Raiders fired in October 2023 after 21 months and a 9-16 record — is calling plays for New England. Richie Incognito has been doing the talking all week, and the Raiders' locker room won't have to say a word if the scoreboard does it for them. Our full preview has the matchups, the records, and the stakes. Watch it live; this one's had a circle around it since the schedule came out.

UFC Vegas 122: a title-shot callout and a retirement

The UFC came home to the Meta APEX and put on the kind of card that reminds you why Fight Nights exist. Brendan Allen submitted Christian Leroy Duncan in the main event — his fourth straight win, improving to 26-7 overall and 16-4 in the UFC — and immediately called for a title shot, with former champ Dricus Du Plessis name-checked as the fallback. Six of seven prelims ended inside the distance, and Otari Tanzilovi opened the main card with what people are already calling a knockout-of-the-year candidate against Malcolm Wellmaker.

But the night's real moment belonged to Gerald Meerschaert. The 38-year-old, on the roster since 2016, lost to Julius Walker — then took the gloves off before the result was even announced. Ten years, 28 UFC fights, 60 MMA fights total, and the most finishes in UFC middleweight history with 12, a record he took from Anderson Silva. Fighters retire every weekend; very few leave with a record book entry. Full results and the Meerschaert tribute are here.

Manilow's comeback hits a wall — and Awakening bows out

Two legends of the Vegas theater circuit, two very different weekends. Barry Manilow's return to the Westgate lasted exactly one full show. After Thursday's triumphant welcome-back — his first since lung surgery following the December 2025 cancer diagnosis — the 83-year-old got hit with bronchitis. Friday night he stopped after two songs, reportedly telling the crowd to "talk amongst yourselves," per Billboard's reporting, while his band played instrumentals until a PA announcement ended it. Saturday's show was canceled outright, with Ticketmaster sending refund emails. A representative told Variety the next date is listed for October 15. For a guy who has already postponed this residency twice, the body keeps writing checks the calendar can't cash.

And then there was the goodbye that went as planned. Wynn's Awakening played its final performance last night. The $120 million production — the one that replaced Le Rêve in November 2022, with 60 international artists and narration by Anthony Hopkins — closed October 10 as announced. The cast and crew were told in a companywide meeting led by COO Brian Gullbrants, and performers were invited to audition for whatever comes next: Wynn says a new production debuts in 2027. Say what you want about the economics — hotel-owned spectacle at that scale was always a bet — but four years of paychecks for nearly 200 people is nothing to dismiss. Our final-week story has the full history.

The August numbers: cheapest rooms in years, still empty beds

The August tourism report landed and it's the story behind every other story in this town. Average daily room rate: $150.32 — the lowest monthly level of 2026. Occupancy: 74.1%, down 3.4 points. Harry Reid airport traffic: 4.15 million passengers, down 9.2% from last August, with year-to-date traffic off 7.15%. The one bright corner: gaming revenue was up 3.1%, and convention attendance rose 6%. Leisure travel is what's broken; the business of the town is holding it up. We dug into the full breakdown — including why cheaper rooms didn't move the needle and what October's early signs look like.

Around the Southwest

Los Angeles: Game 1 of the NLCS is today — the Dodgers at the Brewers, with Tarik Skubal on the mound for LA embracing the three-peat pressure — "the pressure surrounding the Dodgers is a privilege," Skubal said — Miguel Rojas expected back on the roster after the back injury, and Shohei Ohtani mired in a 2-for-13 postseason slump. Separately, LA drivers get a headache this weekend: the Vincent Thomas Bridge faces weekend lane closures ahead of a full 16-month shutdown for a $753 million overhaul. And the Chargers go into Denver without Ladd McConkey, who's not expected to play on the foot injury.

Phoenix: The Lions visit the Cardinals at State Farm Stadium in Glendale today — 4:25 p.m. ET on Fox. Arizona State volleyball hosts TCU at Desert Financial Arena at 2 p.m. on ESPN2, with the rivalry match against Arizona coming Thursday.

The desert: Tropical Storm Rachel's remnants are still pushing showers from Arizona into Southern California through today — expect travel delays in Phoenix and LA. Luke Combs's Category 10 honky-tonk opens Thursday at the Flamingo — seven bars, three stories, right down the boulevard from Blake Shelton's Ole Red. Details here.

More from the Vegas beat: yesterday's roundup · the August tourism numbers, in full · Knights–Kings recap · UFC Vegas 122 results · Awakening's final week