LAS VEGAS — The king of hot dog eating is back on top!
Westfield resident Joey Chestnut dominated one-time rival Takeru Kobayashi in a made-for-TV competition, dubbed "Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef," that aired live Monday, Sept. 2 on Netflix.
Chestnut downed a world-record 83 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes to top Kobayashi. The six-time Nathan's champion finished with 65 hot dogs and buns in his first meeting with Chestnut in 15 years.
Chestnut, a 16-time winner of the annual July 4 contest on Coney Island, was banned from the event this summer after he ended his sponsorship agreement with Nathan's and signed on with plant-based Impossible Foods.
His best performance in the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest was 76 hot dogs and buns, a mark he set in 2021. Kobayashi finished a personal-best 64 1/2 hot dogs and buns in his last meeting with Chestnut in 2009.
Chestnut won $100,000 for the Labor Day victory in Las Vegas and was presented a one-of-a-kind WWE-designed championship belt by WWE superstar Rey Mysterio.
Kobayashi announced his official retirement from competitive eating after the event.
The contest was 10 minutes long, like the Nathan's event, but contestants were not allowed to dunk the hot dogs in liquid and could not separate the hot dog from the bun, a common strategy in the July 4 competition.
While the hot dog eating was the main event, fans of competitive eating did not go, uh — hungry — during the televised show. Matt Stonie, who won the 2015 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, defeated Olympians Ryan Murphy, Max Irving and Ryan Lochte by devouring 53 chicken wings in three minutes, compared to a total of 36 by the team of challengers. Also, Leah Shutkever set a Guinness World Record by eating more than five pounds of watermelon in 2 1/2 minutes.
