If horse racing is the sport of kings, I say competitive eating is the sport of emperors. After all, emperors really knew how to eat. The Roman emperor Vitellius, for example, was known for feasting multiple times a day, each feast consisiting of some 2,000 fish and 4,000 birds. Sweet. I don't know if that was for everyone at the feast or just for this monster fat-ass, but either way, I think Vitellius would have done well at the Krystal Square Off World Hamburger Eating Championships that were held over the weekend. Ultimate Eating Badass Takeru Kobayashi won, setting a new world record by EATING 97 FUCKING HAMBURGERS IN 8 MINUTES!!!!!!!!
God I love competitive eating. I remember as a boy when I would look up to the heros of sport as Gods to be emulated. I dreamed of being an athlete, with all the hot ladies and the money, ridiculous, impractical cars and enough crazy fur coats to decimate the small mammal population of North America...and then as I grew into a man and then into a bitter 30 year old asshole, I would check off the things that were no longer possible. Football? No. Baseball? No Chance. Swimming? Nope. As I passed into my late twenties, I noticed that the athletes could be my children and that none of them had ever heard Tiffany's version of "I Think We're Alone Now". By the time I turned thirty, everything was out except for competitive eating and professional poker. These childhood dreams may still come true. My wide-eyed inner child who once reveled in ESPN dreams now lives on ESPN2.
Poker of course is now extremely popular (that's why I hate it), but it's time is passing. The next great American sporting craze will be competitive eating. The thing these two sports have in common is that it looks like anyone can do it. Lard-asses who spend their time in ass-shaped couch divots, wearing adult diapers because they'd rather shit themselves than walk to the bathroom or miss a minute of The Gilmore Girls can't identify with mainstream athletes like Lebron, Tiger or Eli Manning...however they sure can eat and play cards so the seeds of those dying dreams of athletic achievement (and the hot, wild sex that inevitably follows such achievement) can find fertile ground during Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. Fuck Michael Jordan...the Hall of Heroes has been repopulated with names such as Takeru "The Tsunami" Kobayashi, Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas and Crazy Legs Conti. Competitive Eating is the sport of Pirates, Cavemen and Vikings and all the hairiest, most manly men and women.
Some awesomeness perpetrated by men and women with excessively think and bristly back hair (view more world records at the IFOCE website):
Oleg Zhornitskiy once ate 4 32-ounce bowls of Mayonnaise in 8 minutes.
Dale Boone (extremely manly name) once ate 84 ounces of baked beans in 1 minute 52 seconds (I wouldn't want to be his adult diaper!)
Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas once ate 44 Maine Lobsters (That's 11.3 pounds of meat) in 12 minutes. Seriously, this chick is so freakin' hot. I want to ask her out to Old Country Buffet and see what kind of damage she can do and then make out with her after she pukes it all up.
Eric Booker once ate 21 Baseball size Matzo-balls in 5 minutes 25 seconds.
Joey Chestnut once ate 6.25 pounds of tempura deep-fried Asparagus in 10 minutes.
And Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas also kicked Cool Hand Luke in the nuts by eating 65 hard-boiled eggs in 6 minutes 40 seconds.
These guys and gals are seriously awesome, forging new heights of insane gluttony and pushing athletic prowess and grace to new levels. What's doubly awesome is that while three quarters of the world lives in abject poverty and near-starvation, we can have a sport where you eat enough food to keep you alive for a month and then end up puking it all up into a bucket, in blatant scorn for the poor (after time expires of course! You don't want to be disqualified!). THIS is America's Pastime. Baseball is for little girls.
I want to be a competitive eater so bad. I would be unstoppable. I'd change my name to Bubba and live on a mountain top somewhere, training my gurgitive willpower by eating whole, raw goats for every meal. Then, for two weeks a year I'd come down and eat fucking everything, sweeping the IFOCE (International Federation of Competitive Eating) events and making enough money to buy more goats. I'd then return to my mountain top and continue to get hairier and hairier, eat goats and meditate on the futility of the human condition while wearing an adult diaper. It would be sweet.
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