Joey Chestnut will attempt to do the extraordinary on July 4, more than 2,000 miles away from the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest to which he was banned.
He’ll be competing against soldiers from Fort Bliss Army Base in El Paso, Texas. But as he devours hot dogs and buns, the 16-time Nathan’s champion will also be thinking about his Coney Island rivals.
The El Paso contest will last five minutes. The Nathan’s contest in Brooklyn, N.Y., will last 10 minutes. Chestnut said he hopes to consume more hot dogs and buns in five minutes than the winner of this year’s Nathan’s contest consumes in 10 minutes.
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“I think 56 is doable,” said Chestnut, who set the Nathan’s record in 2021 with 76 hot dogs and buns. “I’d be very happy to do that.”
There won’t be a live broadcast on ESPN like the Nathan’s contest, but there will be a live stream, with the chewing beginning at 5 p.m. ET. There will also be charter planes flying banners in Los Angeles and Miami encouraging people to “watch Joey eat.”
“I wish them luck,” said George Shea of Major League Eating (MLE), which organizes the Nathan’s contest. “And I suppose it’s possible that Joey is such an incredible eater that he could do it (eating more hot dogs than the Nathan’s winner in half the time) and that it’s a way of snubbing us at Coney Island. But it’s not just going to the Nathan’s Fourth of July hot dog eating contest.”
Nothing seems to be the same with the Nathan’s contest anymore, especially Chestnut’s relationship with Shea, the event’s longtime host, and MLE. It was MLE who announced on June 11 that Chestnut could not participate in the Nathan’s contest because he had signed a sponsorship deal with Impossible Foods, a brand that sells meat substitutes. Competitive eaters in the Nathan’s contest cannot promote any hot dog other than Nathan’s, which is sponsoring the contest on June 4.
On Tuesday, Shea said MLE had offered to “set aside the exclusivity issue” and let Chestnut compete this year. But he would be allowed to do so with plans to sign a multi-year deal with Nathan’s before the 2025 competition and end his partnership with Impossible Foods.
Chestnut representatives declined the offer, Shea said. Chestnut representatives did not provide comment in response to USA TODAY Sports’ emailed request for comment.
“I think it’s fair to say that Impossible or any other brand that chooses Joey is doing so because of his reputation as a hot dog eater,” Shea said. “In fact, what they’re promoting and selling is a hot dog. So I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that there’s not a conflict of interest.”
Regardless, Chestnut will be wrapped in patriotism Thursday at Fort Bliss, where he’ll have to eat more hot dogs than the combined total of four soldiers to win.
“I figure maybe I should do five (soldiers) so I don’t get lazy,” Chestnut told USA TODAY Sports. “Sometimes if I feel like I’m in the lead, I slow down. I really want to push hard for the five minutes.”
“If I have to eat on the Fourth of July, I’m going to eat hard.”
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Joey Chestnut Faces Ban
Three weeks after learning he was banned from Nathan’s, Chestnut said he is still recovering from the situation. This will be the first time in 20 years that he will not be attending the fourth edition at Coney Island.
“There’s definitely a lot of pain,” he said. “There’s some heartbreak.”
In 2022, the importance of this competition to Chestnut became clear. He entered less than three weeks after his mother passed away. And he arrived at the competition on crutches because he had a broken leg.
“I was like, okay, I don’t really want to tell people it’s a broken leg because they’ll realize how crazy I am and how much I love this competition,” he said. “And I really didn’t want to tell people my mom passed away because they’d be like, what, you should be grieving.”
“This situation is really bad, but it’s not as bad as that. I was able to get through it and I was able to overcome the year I lost (in 2015 to Matt Stonie) and come back stronger. I’m going to get through it and we’ll see where it takes me.”
Shea said of Chestnut: “He’s a great person and I consider him a friend. I would never want him to experience emotional distress. But I believe in this case the emotional stress was caused by his choices.”
A welcome distraction, Chestnut said, is his scheduled Labor Day showdown with Takeru Kobayashi, which will be streamed by Netflix. They last faced off in 2006, a year before Kobayashi left Nathan’s due to contractual issues with MLE. Chestnut expects intense competition from his former rival.
“He’s not friendly toward me, which makes me even more motivated,” Chestnut said. “We know we’re trying to push each other to uncomfortable limits.”
Joey Chestnut Open to Nathan’s Return
Chestnut said he remains hopeful of returning to the Nathan’s competition. But he said he has no regrets about signing with Impossible Foods and how it turned out. His representatives and Impossible Foods would not disclose details of the deal.
“Maybe time and public opinion will make them more reasonable,” he said of MLE, which runs the Nathan competition.
On X, New York Mayor Eric Adams wrote: “Stop acting like idiots! It would be ‘impossible’ to hold Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest this year without Joey Chestnut. Let’s find a way to squash this beef and bring the champ back for another 4th of July at Coney Island!”
Shea said: “He’s right. The problem here is we’ve gotten into a contract dispute. It’s a question of who’s right and who’s wrong. At the end of the day, the fans just want to see Joey.”
But MLE’s offer to let Chestnut compete if he agreed to sign with Nathan’s and leave Impossible Foods was rejected, as was a plant-based hot dog at the annual Fourth of July contest. But the standoff remained civil.
“I’m not burning bridges,” Chestnut said. “They made this bed and now we have to sleep in it and find a way, if there is a way, (to reconcile).”
“But I think I’ve been pretty respectful publicly.”
Joey Chestnut, Meat Lover
Chestnut refuses to eat plant-based hot dogs at Fort Bliss or during his competition against Kobayashi. Only beef, he insisted, to dispel the misconception that he went from carnivore to vegan because of his contract with Impossible Foods.
Informal discussions between Chestnut and the company had been ongoing since the beginning of the year, said Peter McGuinness, the company’s CEO. Chestnut representatives declined to provide terms of the deal. The company also declined, but said it would charter planes to Los Angeles and Miami with the “Watch Joey Eat” banners.
“It really represents our target audience,” McGuinness said. “We’re a plant-based meat company. We’re not a vegan company. We make foods that are designed to appeal to meat eaters and flexitarians, people who eat animal meat and also eat plant-based products.”
Chestnut attests that he fits the profile.
“And if I eat 14 pounds of bologna on Saturday, you can bet that on Monday I’m going to be eating a plant-based, high-fiber diet,” he said. “It’s part of my recovery. I’m very excited to work with them, but I still love meat.”
For the record, Chestnut said he’ll eat all-beef hot dogs for Kobayashi on Labor Day. And if he ever returns to Coney Island, it’ll be even more beef.
“If he ends up going back to Nathan, we’ll support him,” McGuinness said. “I don’t see this as some kind of contentious wartime competition.
“And I don’t think they should either, frankly.”
What to Expect on July 4th
Chestnut said he’s heard fans say about Nathan’s contest, “We don’t watch without Joey (competing).”
But Shea said he expected larger crowds and higher ratings because of the “intense” controversy surrounding Chestnut. He also said he thought a more competitive contest could draw fans away from an event that draws more than 40,000 people each year, according to Allison O’Donnell, a publicist for the pageant.
While Chestnut usually dominates the field, Shea said this year he expects a tight competition between the top four eaters on the men’s side.
And Chestnut’s future at Coney Island?
“He’s always welcome,” Shea said. “If he and his team want to solve the problem, I’m sure we can.”
Follow Josh Peter on social media @joshlpeter11