International Competitive Eating
June 19, 2003 11:37 AM   Subscribe

50 ½ hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes? Will the belt come back to the USA this July 4th? Is The Fridge our best shot for the world title to come back? But with Kobayashi returning to defend his title, is William Perry just a 100 to 1 longshot? And in the excitement about the Hot Dog race, let's not forget the other great competitions! Who could ever forget Zhornitskiy's immortal achievement of 74 chicken wings in 12 minutes?

Welcome to the wide world of competitive eating! The runup to the grand 4th of July contest in Brooklyn may be winding its way to a city near you!

At 131 pounds, people didn't take him seriously - last year, some even thought that he should have been disqualified. But you gotta admit it - someone who can eat over 17 pounds of cow brains in 15 minutes is...well, awesome is one word....
posted by jasper411 (37 comments total)
 
Ja kentoo suru, Kobayashi-san!
posted by SweetJesus at 11:49 AM on June 19, 2003


Da Fridge...wow. All Clemson is proud.
posted by alumshubby at 12:05 PM on June 19, 2003


hey man, this is my turf :^)
posted by krunk at 12:11 PM on June 19, 2003


this sport's just never taken off in ethiopia. a shame that.
posted by quonsar at 12:13 PM on June 19, 2003


My friends and I sometimes have contests where we can see who can spill the most milk on the street in five minutes.

Oh, the laughs we have!
posted by jon_kill at 12:17 PM on June 19, 2003


It's a pretty disgusting event, but the rules did say that you couldn't upchuck during the contest. There are no rules about puking after the event, in fact all of them do. There was a show on some cable channel about these guys a year or so ago. They were some of the most jingoistic SOBs I've ever seen.
posted by substrate at 12:29 PM on June 19, 2003


Quonsar, that ethnic joke is outdated buddy, I stopped telling Ethiopan jokes in third grade.

FYI, I've seen this guy in action on the Fox Glutton Bowl (no, not their political news coverage) and it's really freaking impressive. I don't think he can be beaten unless they substantially lengthen the time period allotted, when the size of his stomach would be more of a disadvantage compared to the fatasses he competes against.
posted by zekinskia at 12:32 PM on June 19, 2003


I agree, substrate, they were just pissed because a little Japanese guy embarassed them so horribly on FOX, of all networks. It's like, what's the point of being a disgustingly obese hick if you can't eat more than a cool little foreign dude? Years of training down the toilet, I tell you...
posted by zekinskia at 12:35 PM on June 19, 2003


17 pounds of cow brains in 15 minutes is...well, awesome is one word....

Prion is another.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:35 PM on June 19, 2003


7 sticks of butter in 5 minutes. 4 jars of mayonaisse in 8 minutes. That's far more disgusting than cow brains.
posted by archimago at 12:46 PM on June 19, 2003


PinkStainlessTail, what's a little Mad Cow disease between friends? I think it should be added as a question at the local Red Cross along with the others when I'm donating blood:

Have you ever used non-prescription intraveneous drugs or had sex with somebody who has? (Y/N)
Have you ever eaten 17 pounds of cow brains? (Y/N)
posted by substrate at 12:47 PM on June 19, 2003


50 1/2 hotdogs in twelve minutes. Think about that for a second. That's over 1 hotdog *plus* 1 hotdog bun every 15 seconds. I can't drink water that fast, much less for the eternity of 12 minutes. He ate 16% of his total weight in food.
posted by dgaicun at 12:48 PM on June 19, 2003


...In the final seconds, with many of the 20 competitors already satisfied with their effort, Kobayashi's body heaved as his cheeks ballooned with remnants. Since visible regurgitation during competition means a disqualification, many in the crowd cried foul and waited for the title to be given to Eric "Badlands" Booker, who finished second with 26 hot dogs.

Footage captured by ESPN confirms that some hot dog slush did spill through Kobayashi's fingers and pieces of liquid bun spouted out of his nose, but footage shows time had already expired.


Personally, I want to see the Frig do that this year.
posted by PrinceValium at 1:02 PM on June 19, 2003


Whatever the prions do to Mr. Kobayashi would pale in comparison to what would happen to him if he fails to obey the orders of Mr. Soze to eat those hot dogs.
posted by mcwetboy at 1:11 PM on June 19, 2003


Ah, a celebration of waste and gluttony. Food is better if it is puked out and thrown away, rather than fed to starving people.
posted by benjh at 1:26 PM on June 19, 2003


zekinskia, you thought i was making an ethnic joke? while ethiopians are ravaged by AIDS, enjoy a life expectancy of 43 years, and experience a 1 in 10 infant mortality rate, we celebrate porcine excess. well, hey, at least they aren't all starving to death. this year. it wasn't an ethnic joke, it was an "aren't we a bunch of sick motherfuckers" observation. and we are.
posted by quonsar at 1:55 PM on June 19, 2003


Welcome to the wide world of competitive eating!

I wish people would stop welcoming me to the World of different things. It's very presumptuous.

What if I don't want to come to your world? What if I'm already a long time member of your world? Did you ever think of that?
posted by Bonzai at 2:00 PM on June 19, 2003


Welcome to the world of being welcomed to worlds to which you had no desire to be welcomed!
posted by vraxoin at 2:15 PM on June 19, 2003


This ranks up there as one of the sickest things I've seen or read. That's just flat-out disgusting and pathetic. First, that this "competition" exists-why don't' we just give that food to the homeless people? Second, that people care enough to watch it (sounds utterly repulsive-vomiting all over everything afterwards and possibly during..what fun!) Third, that enough people care that there is an official group that sanctions the events!

This is not "eating," this is inhuman, repulsive, wasteful consumption.
posted by aacheson at 2:24 PM on June 19, 2003


How dare they race cars. Couldn't they give that fuel to poor people?
posted by NortonDC at 2:26 PM on June 19, 2003


Hmmm. I agree with you in principle aacheson, about giving the food to the homeless. However, in the larger scale of wasteful behavior, a few eating contests are nothing. People that order huge quantities of food at restaurants, eat little, and then don't take home the leftovers -- that's sickening. The appalling quantities of food that rot in warehouses or supermarkets -- that's disgusting.

People participate in all kinds of insane competitions. While I'm embarassed to dignify eating competitions with this comparison, many marathon runners are not exactly pretty to watch either. They often cross the finish line bloody and dry heaving from dehydration.
posted by synapse at 2:34 PM on June 19, 2003


Years of training down the toilet, I tell you...
Quite literally, in fact.

While the amount of food consumed at these spectacles is miniscule in the scale of world-wide hunger, it sickens me a little as a matter of principle that contests are held to see who can be the most disgusting pig and that the contestants take this as a matter of pride. Low self-esteem anyone?
posted by dg at 3:14 PM on June 19, 2003


Why are you all wasting your time on MetaFilter, when you could be out giving blood or breast-feeding war orphans?! For shame. For shame.

this is inhuman, repulsive, wasteful consumption

killjoy 1 fatsos 0
posted by dgaicun at 3:17 PM on June 19, 2003


That bear absolutely destroyed that guy on FOX's brilliant Man Vs. Beast.

The Fridge played for the Chicago Bears.

Think about it.
posted by noisemartyr at 3:26 PM on June 19, 2003


17 pounds of cow brains in 15 minutes is...well

it's just barely over a pound of cow brains a minute is what it is! can't we expect more per-minute-cowbrain-consumption from our world's finest mouthletes?
posted by Peter H at 3:54 PM on June 19, 2003


This stuff is really big over in Asia, we are behind from some of the reports of late.
posted by thomcatspike at 4:11 PM on June 19, 2003


Don't forget the muktuk eating contests in Alaska. A friend of mine tried it once and from his description, the linked comments comparing it to the taste of cod liver oil with the texture of a tire are charitable, but not too far off the money. That is one eating contest that doesn't waste too much food.

On the other hand, there is always Bill Hicks's line about Gallagher: "Only in America can you have a comedian who ends his show by destroying good food with a sledgehammer!" Hicks once stated. "I guarantee there won't be any Gallagher World Tour any time soon -- and if there is, there will be no dates in Somalia. [Child's voice] `We will get tickets to Gallagher and hopefully we will catch a watermelon rind and live another day!'"
posted by TedW at 4:24 PM on June 19, 2003


For what it's worth, this contest gets the same treatment on Japanese news shows as it does back home, a one-minute gee-whiz segment before the commercial break. It is equally bewildering to the Japanese, I think.
posted by planetkyoto at 5:12 PM on June 19, 2003


Why are you all wasting your time on MetaFilter, when you could be out giving blood or breast-feeding war orphans?! For shame. For shame.

I'm gay and I don't lactate. So I can't do either. But at least I don't gorge myself and puke it up while some guy starves on the street because the economy is so bad.

(There, it's a fat thread, a gay thread, and a Bush's fault the economy is so bad thread, all in one.)
posted by benjh at 5:45 PM on June 19, 2003


the trifecta!
posted by quonsar at 6:13 PM on June 19, 2003


I think I lactated once. It was weird.

...Is there some sort of contest for that?
posted by dgaicun at 6:19 PM on June 19, 2003


Planetkyoto, Kobayashi is quite the star these days, isn't he? I saw an hour-long eating competition one night before my TV broke where beat the competition by eating 19 omori bowls of gyudon. They had all these computer graphic mock-ups of his stomach and interviewed doctors about how he manages to do it (I think he's a bit deformed).
posted by dydecker at 6:27 PM on June 19, 2003


People that order huge quantities of food at restaurants, eat little, and then don't take home the leftovers -- that's sickening.

That's me, and I don't have even the slightest bit of remorse over it.

It takes a great deal of vigilance on my part to maintain a healthy weight with built in room for indulging on social occasions, including going out to restaurants with friends. If I take food home, I will eat it in addition to whatever food I would normally eat at home, not in place of it. Is that going to keep me from ordering something that I won't finish? Not a chance. I offer it to those with me, but it never comes home with me, and that's a good thing.
posted by NortonDC at 7:34 PM on June 19, 2003


USA! USA! USA! and I thought the GI Joe Fridge was a low point. Now this? Go Fridge.
posted by brent at 7:36 PM on June 19, 2003


This stuff is really big over in Asia

Not in Korea, that I'm aware. 'course there are a lot of older people here who still remember post-war near-famine, and having a couple million of their brethren dying of hunger up north will also put a damper on the enjoyment of these kinds of foody excesses. Not that awareness of the famine stops conspicuous consumption and a certain twisted pride in throwing away perfectly good food (South Korea threw away more food than was consumed in North Korea last year), of course.

I think this is great, in a misanthropy-reinforcing way, but I also think it would be made much much cooler by putting a bullet through the skull of the 'winner' after each contest and forcing the losers to eat him.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:55 PM on June 19, 2003


What I wanna know is did Lardass have to pay to get into the contest?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:01 PM on June 19, 2003


The 50 and 1/2 hotdogs I could believe. But buns too?!? They're just filler, man!
posted by geekhorde at 10:50 PM on June 19, 2003


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