Opinion | Joey Chestnut, the best there ever was

Part of it is the vaudevillian spectacle of the whole enterprise, the carnival-barker freakshow spirit that makes the setting of Coney Island so apt. But, at the risk of coming across as if my bar for athletic entertainment has been set too low, the real reason I watch it is because I find the competition — and the competitors’ achievements — legitimately impressive. I mean, almost anyone several inches north of 6 feet can dunk a basketball. How many people can consume a Dodger Stadium afternoon matinee’s worth of dogs in less time than it takes to microwave popcorn? It might be ridiculous for such a competition to exist, but you can at least appreciate it being done so well. If you are going to play, play your best.

That’s why, for all your (pretty great) jokes, I was honestly saddened to hear that Joey Chestnut, the greatest hot dog eating champion of all time, will not appear at this year’s Nathan’s contest because of a deal he signed with Impossible Foods, a rival company that makes a plant-based hot dog. Whatever your thoughts on which side is right here — I prefer to think that in a battle between the organization that hosts a hot dog eating contest on July 4 and the man who dominates it, there are no possible bad guys — the end result, losing the GOAT from the signature event he has defined for two decades, is an unquestioned bummer. You want to see greatness? Chestnut, in his own very specific way, is greatness.

To put Chestnut’s incredible run at the top of his sport in context, it’s important to understand the history of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. The event began in 1967 (held on June 30 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the hot dog) and was won by Walter Paul, a 400-pound truck driver. The contest was held on Memorial Day through 1978 until moving to July 4 in 1979; the 1981 winner was a man named Thomas DeBerry, who, according to news reports at the time, “downed 11 hot dogs in five minutes and then rushed off with his family to attend a barbecue.” (This is something, and if I had just gone through a particularly dark period in my life, I think I could personally do.) The event had this sort of geek-show quality for decades — one year it was won by a 130-pound West German woman who, before the starting pistol, had never eaten a hot dog in her life, and another year, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa took part (and wasn’t half bad) — until 2001, when everything changed forever.

That year, an unknown Japanese man namedTakeru Kobayashi made his first appearance in the contest. Previously, the record for most hot dogs eaten in 12 minutes was 25 1/8; Kobayashi, weighing only 128 pounds, showed up and nearly doubled the record, reaching 50 by introducing a novel strategy of eating called “the Solomon Method,” which involved him taking the dog out of the bun, putting the bun in water and using it to wash down the dog. His record was so surprising that the event ran out of signs that day to mark how many hot dogs he had eaten.

Kobayashi’s 2001 performance was so unprecedented that the only historical corollary I can come up with is what Babe Ruth did in baseball. No one had hit more than 27 homers in a season until Ruth showed up and started smashing more than 50, then 60. Like Ruth, Kobayashi blew everyone’s minds, but, more important, he informed other competitors of what was now possible.

What had been a silly diversion became a serious competition about the limits of human potential. Kobayashi would win the next five hot dog eating contests, but his winning margin shrunk a little more every year as his foes raised their games to challenge him. And one, in particular, inspired by Kobayashi’s abilities, began to close in on him.

I am very proud to say that I, along with 30,000 others, was there when Joey Chestnut, at last, dethroned the Babe Ruth of competitive eating by eating 66 dogs in 12 minutes, defeating Kobayashi by three dogs. (Chestnut’s performance initially was listed as winning by two dogs, but Kobayashi lost one from his total because of a “reversal,” which is the competitive eating term for vomiting.) I hope you will not mock me when I tell you I found the victory emotionally stirring and, it must be said, even patriotic. To see an American take back this most American of titles, to elevate a sport in front of the man who had changed the entire sport (such as it is), moved me and many in the crowd. I swear, when, afterward, Chestnut said, “If I needed to eat another one right now, I could,” people were chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” I might have been one of them.

That victory was followed by a run of dominance that surpassed Kobayashi’s: Chestnut won the title 15 of the next 16 years, losing only by two dogs in 2015 to YouTuber Matt Stonie before recovering to set the all-time record of 70 the next year. He ticked that record up to 76 in 2021; a year later, he won despite having to shove a protester off the stage in the middle of the event.

A run like that — winning his first title at 23 and losing only one championship all the way into his 40s — is unparalleled in American sports, or any sport. Even if you think this sport is gross, or isn’t a sport at all, 16 titles in 17 years is absurd. That’s as many titles as Tom Brady, LeBron James and Derek Jeter combined. And Chestnut did it all while wearing a bib.

He was heavily favored to win this year as well. Alas: Now, unless Major League Eating and Chestnut can come to a peace agreement, we’ll never know. To take Joey Chestnut out of the hot dog eating contest is like booting Patrick Mahomes just two weeks before the Super Bowl. Chestnut is on a run that no other competitor has been on in my lifetime, and now, because of an ugly sponsorship battle, it’s being taken away from him and all of us. It’s a damn shame. You know what it makes me want to do? It makes me want to have a reversal.