Will Leach is the author of the novels How Lucky and The Time Has Come, a contributing editor at New York magazine, and founder of the former sports website Deadspin, where he also writes a free weekly newsletter.
Look, I know the hot dog eating contest is a joke. The Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest is the epitome of American charlatan gluttony, a rich country's uncomfortably realistic display of its decadent opulence, with a line of humans shoving processed beef waste into their mouths as fast as human biological limits will allow. I'm sure that every Fourth of July, when I convince my friends and family to watch the contest with me, I'll be met with a repulsive response. But that doesn't stop me, and frankly millions of other Americans, from making the contest a central part of our Independence Day traditions.
Part of the reason is that the whole event is a vaudeville spectacle, a carnival barker's showmanship that makes the Coney Island setting so fitting. But at the risk of sounding like my standards for sports entertainment are too low, the real reason I watch it is because I find the contest, and the contestants' accomplishments, truly amazing. I mean, pretty much anyone over six feet a few inches tall can dunk a basketball. How many people can eat a hot dog at an afternoon matinee at Dodger Stadium in less time than it takes to make popcorn in a microwave? Maybe it's ridiculous that such a contest even exists, but at least we can be grateful that it's so well done. If you're going to take part, do your best.
That's why, all your (fairly great) jokes aside, I was honestly saddened to hear that Joey Chestnut, the all-time hot dog eating champion, won't be competing at Nathan's this year because he's signed a deal with rival company Impossible Foods, which makes plant-based hot dogs. Whatever your thoughts on who's right (I'd like to think that in a battle between the organization that runs a hot dog eating contest on the Fourth of July and the man who gets to dominate it, there's no bad guy), the end result of losing the GOAT from the signature event he's defined for 20 years is undoubtedly disappointing. Want to see greatness? Chestnut is great in his own way.
To understand Chestnut's incredible reign at the top of the sports world, it's important to understand the history of the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. The event began in 1967 (held on June 30th to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the hot dog) and was won by 400-pound truck driver Walter Paul. The contest was held on Memorial Day until 1978, when it moved to the Fourth of July in 1979. The 1981 winner was a man named Thomas DeBerry, who, according to reports at the time, “downed 11 hot dogs in five minutes, then rushed off to a barbecue with his family.” (This is something I personally would do if I was going through a particularly dark time in my life.) The event had this kind of geek show vibe for decades. One year it was won by a 130-pound West German woman who'd never eaten a hot dog in her life before the starting pistol went off, and another year it was Curtis Suria, founder of Guardian Angels (and that wasn't bad!) But that continued on until 2001, when everything changed forever.
That year, an unknown Japanese man, Takeru Kobayashi, entered the contest for the first time. Until then, the most hot dogs eaten in 12 minutes was 25 1/8. Weighing just 128 pounds, Kobayashi nearly doubled the previous record to 50 by using a novel method of eating called the “Solomon Method,” in which he removed the hot dogs from the bun, dipped the bun in water and swallowed it. His record was so amazing that the event that day ran out of signs displaying how many hot dogs he had eaten.
Kobayashi's 2001 performance was so unprecedented that the only historical corollary I can think of is what Babe Ruth did in baseball: no player had ever hit more than 27 home runs in a season until Ruth came along and started hitting 50 and then 60-plus home runs. Like Ruth, Kobayashi astonished everyone, but more importantly, he let other players know what was now possible.
What had been a simple pastime evolved into a serious competition on the limits of human possibility. Kobayashi won the next five hot dog-eating contests, but his winning margins narrowed slightly each year as his opponents rose to higher levels of difficulty. Then one opponent in particular, inspired by Kobayashi's abilities, began to close in on him.
I am proud to say that 30,000 people, including myself, were there when Joey Chestnut finally took the Babe Ruth crown of competitive eating by finishing off 66 dogs in 12 minutes, beating Kobayashi by three. (Chestnut was originally credited with a win of two dogs, but Kobayashi lost a total dog due to a “reversal,” which is competitive eating lingo for vomiting.) I hope you won't laugh when I say that this victory was moving, even patriotic. It touched not only me, but many in the audience, to see an American reclaim this most American title and elevate the sport in the presence of the man who changed the entire sport. Afterwards, when Chestnut said, “If you need to eat one more dog right now, you can,” I swear people were yelling, “USA! USA!” I may have been one of them.
After this win, Chestnut continued to dominate Kobayashi, winning 15 titles over the next 16 years, losing by just two fish to YouTuber Matt Stoney in 2015 but redeeming himself the following year with a record-high 70 titles. In 2021, he increased that record to 76 titles and won a year later despite pushing a protester off the stage midway through the event.
Winning his first title at age 23 and then only losing once until his 40s is unheard of in American sports, or any sport for that matter. Even if you think the sport is gross or not even a sport, 16 championships in 17 years is crazy. That's as many titles as Tom Brady, LeBron James and Derek Jeter have combined. And Chestnut did it all while still wearing the bib.
He was the favorite to win again this year. Sadly, unless Major League Eating and Chestnut come to a settlement, who knows. Taking Joey Chestnut out of a hot dog eating contest would be like taking Patrick Mahomes out just two weeks before the Super Bowl. Chestnut has been on a roll like no other competitor has in my lifetime, and now that roll is being taken away from him and all of us because of an ugly sponsorship battle. It's such a shame. You know what makes me want to do it? I want to see it turn around.
