The Greatest Eater of All Time

EPISODE 138: "Fifty shades of brown."

The first person I ever interviewed as a professional journalist (read: intern at Sports Illustrated in July 2006) was a 22-year-old named Joey Chestnut.

The story doesn’t exist online anymore because, once again, we are all raccoons dipping cotton candy into water. But I fished a screenshot out of the Wayback Machine for you here, as proof:

Back then, 18 years ago, I had no idea that Joey Chestnut would go on to break 55 (!) different world eating records and dominate the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.

But on July Fourth of this year, as you may have noticed, neither Joey nor his rival, the legendary Takeru Kobayashi, was at their usual perch on the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues in Coney Island. A whole other controversy we’ll get to.

For now, though, you should know that both men have agreed to a duel: a hot-dog-eat-off, live on Netflix, this Labor Day, September 2nd.

Which has revived another, older controversy. About whether Major League Eaters should even be considered athletes.

And so what I wanted to find out today was exceptionally invasive. I wanted to know the ins and — especially — the outs of how Joey Chestnut became the greatest competitive eater of all time.

DKN/YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Calmly,

Pablo