There was plenty to forget about sports in Las Vegas in 2022
Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin stepped in the ring at T-Mobile Arena to complete the trilogy between two of the most popular and successful boxers of their generation.
It happened on Sept. 17, but don’t feel ashamed if it has already been erased from your memory.
What once was envisioned as an historic fight was hardly a blip on the sports radar by the time they finally agreed to a third bout.
At least Golovkin finally got an elusive victory over Alvarez after a draw and a loss in 2017 and 2018. Except that he didn’t. Alvarez won the third fight by decision and concluded the series 2-0-1 against Golovkin.
It wasn’t alone in being a Las Vegas sports moment to forget in 2022.
This was the year the NFL Pro Bowl was essentially put out of its misery and buried in the desert. After years of slow deterioration in the level of play, Raiders star Maxx Crosby exposed the silliness of the game by exerting like 40 percent effort and completely showing up every other player on the field.
His dominance, in part, led to a long overdue drastic overhaul of the league’s All-Star weekend, which returns to Allegiant Stadium in February.
Should the new event go as planned, the Pro Bowl of the past will be very quickly forgotten.
As for the team that plays its regular-season home games there, the Raiders were unable to score on a potential game-tying drive and fell short against the Bengals in their return to the NFL playoffs. It was a precursor to the 2022 season when, despite bringing in a new coaching staff, they failed in similar situations in six of their first seven losses.
Those consistent and persistent issues were at least part of the reason the Derek Carr era came to an unceremonious end with his benching with two games remaining on the schedule.
While the mark he made on the organization and the rewriting of the franchise record book he did over nearly a decade will long be remembered, his final season was certainly one to forget.
He was in the midst of perhaps his worst statistical season and had thrown the most interceptions in the league at the time he was demoted.
The college team that shares a venue with the Raiders also decided to bring a conclusion to a tenure as the UNLV program fired Marcus Arroyo. Despite his teams showing progress on the field, Arroyo was never able to make a connection with the community or the campus at large. So he is now just another footnote in the program’s history book.
He wasn’t the only high-profile coach who was dismissed this year. The Golden Knights dumped Pete DeBoer after the team failed to make the postseason for the first time in franchise history.
It was a bit of a harsh decision for a coach who had led the team to back-to-back conference finals appearances before a rash of injuries contributed to a lost and forgettable season.
At least the team exists. This was also a year that will go down as the year there was a new rumor about the Oakland A’s moving here every week. The complete lack of appetite for any public money to go to a baseball stadium project was most likely always going to be a non-starter.
Hopefully soon, the flirtations will be over and become distant memories like the rest of these forgettable moments of 2022.
Unless, of course, there is a plan for full private financing. Then, Play Ball!
Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on Twitter.
