RJ writer Jason Bracelin’s 5 favorite stories of 2025
Dreams are born in Las Vegas. Champions, too, it turns out.
But a city posited on resilience and reinvention demands the same in order for those dreams to actually come true — and endure. Audacity, determination and a willingness to roll the dice on oneself — these are the traits required for success here. And they’re also what unites the subjects of these five stories.
A puncher’s (second) chance
A whole galaxy of boxing stars have lived, trained and competed in Las Vegas, the world capital of the sport. But it wasn’t until Feb. 23, 2013, that the city got its first hometown champ.
On that night, Ishe Oluwa Kamau Ali Smith took home the 154-pound IBF belt after proving that former title holder Cornelius “K9” Bundrage was more bark than bite.
Now, Smith delivers the mail.
We shadowed the former boxing champ in his current job as a U.S. postal worker to chronicle his remarkable story of perseverance, overcoming horrific tragedy and fighting on — inside the ring and out.
Swing and a prayer
Ever pounded brews with a tiger splashing around your swimming pool or shooed a full-grown lion off your kitchen counter? Ferdinand and Tony Fercos have.
The brothers are part of one of the most physically gifted and audacious families in the history of Las Vegas entertainment, driven by four brash, carved-from-granite siblings destined for the spotlight, first as teenage circus performers, later as panther-catching magicians who rubbed elbows with Donald Trump on “The Apprentice,” engaged in a brief feud with Siegfried & Roy and toured with a lion in the back of a U-Haul, upon occasion.
In a city posited on perpetual reinvention, on chasing down dreams even when they occasionally become nightmares, on the near-narcotic allure of the spotlight, the Fercos don’t just inhabit Vegas, they embody it.
Ready to take a trip on the trapeze right along with them?
A hard day’s Knight
We came, we saw, we feasted on Cornish game hens sans silverware: Welcome to “Tournament of Kings,” the sword-swinging, spell-casting, fire-breathing, longest-running show on the Strip.
For one night, we embedded ourselves behind the scenes at the incredibly elaborate production from start to finish, where we learned all about the horses in the show, how hard it is to do ballet in the dirt and what kind of toll being a knight takes on one’s ankles. (Spoiler alert: a big one.)
Oh, and we also met a barn cat named Raisin.
The enduring success of “Tournament of Kings” poses the question: How does such old-school showmanship remain not only relevant but steadfastly popular amid an increasingly high-tech landscape of immersive entertainment?
Pedaling down memory lane
“Every one of these bikes, they tell a story,” notes Mike Skoy, gazing up at an array of two-wheelers at The Vault Bicycle Shop, which he opened a decade ago in Centennial Hills.
Skoy has a story to tell, too: A former top rider in Nevada in the early ’90s, he’s built his store into a full-on — albeit largely inconspicuous — bike museum.
But it’s not just banana-seated antiquities that Skoy is preserving here, from the sweet “Charlie’s Angels”-themed ride to the first Hello Kitty bike imported to the United States by the Sanrio company in 1976.
It’s that first taste of freedom found behind a pair of handlebars when you were a kid that he’s really out to tap into — and rekindle.
There will be blood…lots of it
You can smell the meat. It hits the nostrils with a barbecue-y tang — kind of sweet, kind of gross, a blend of sugar and rot.
Noses aren’t the only thing being stimulated: Ears ring with the roar of power tools being wielded by a dude in a dead-skin mask who makes dinner out of people — hence the aroma of cooked flesh, piped in from somewhere.
It’s a Friday night in August, and we’re getting the first look at Area15’s Universal Horror Unleashed, currently making our way through the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”-themed haunted house, one of four here.
This sprawling factory of heebie-jeebies represents a bold bet: Can a year-round haunted attraction succeed outside of Halloween season?
It’s a scary proposition, one which we came to explore. In terms of sheer fun — and blood, guts and saw-blade-shaped pizza bread — putting this story together was a real scream.
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jasonbracelin76 on Instagram.
