Every year on the 4th of July I like to tune into Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest at Coney Island. Is it because I’m a fan of competitive eating? No. Do I love watching people repulsively shove dogs down their gullet? Absolutely not. I don’t know what it is but there’s just something about the event that’s worth a yearly watch.

There are plenty of characters to make fun of from Eater X to the Notorious B.O.B. It’s hilarious to see how seriously they take it and it’s humorous to watch a group of small-time competitors compete in an event they have no chance of winning. It’s like golf used to be when Tiger was on the course. Chesnut and Kobyashi are so far ahead it isn’t even a competition.

The rest of the year, however, not even the WWE is below competitive eating on the stupidity scale. But apparently there’s even a league for competitive- it’s called Major League Eating! The fact that I didn’t even know there was a major league of eating until this year wreaks of a setup.

If Kobayashi has been the McGwire of competitive eating then Joey Chesnut is the Sosa. They’re really in the competitive spotlight in the moment, but they’re a joke as soon as the it shifts away from their “sport.” In effect they’re in the spotlight for 10 minutes, as long as it takes them to inhale 20,000 calories. After that they are barely remembered for 364 days.

The alleged “hold-out” of Kobayashi this year meant he didn’t compete. This allowed for an easy win for the grossest hot dog eater in history, Mr. Chesnut. After the “match” there was some token sports-competition-like trash talking from Chesnut about the manhood of Kobayashi which incited a slight chuckle from me. Is this competition really even competitive? Is it even a sport? Is it even worthy of trash talk? It seemed silly to me and since the 10 minutes were over, I turned off the TV.

That was my loss apparently as afterwards reports of Kobayashi rushing the stage and his subsequent arrest began to show up in the footnotes of sports news stories. It’s barely even worth space in the footnotes, but it was enough to get Major League Eating on the minds of a handful of sports fans.

Google it. It exists. They even have a decent looking website.

I think Kobayashi and his “Free Kobi” t-shirt and hold out were more than staged. We all know the economy is tough. Even big time sports organizations in major sports leagues like the NBA are signing big dollar deals tentatively. How much money is there to be made for a competitive eater? They should be stuffing all the cash they can into their mouths while they have the chance.

Any money Kobayashi makes is more than enough. I see no warrant for him to hold out in his sport, especially in the Daytona 500 of his pastime. That’s why I believe it was staged.

I imagine the big wigs of the MLE crafting a plan like this:
News outlets would report of his contract dispute with the MLE and then thousands of people would laugh at the TV and say “What’s MLE stand for? MAJOR LEAGUE EATING! There’s a league for that?” Simple? Yes! A genius ploy? Absolutely!

There’s only 1 real competitive eating competition that anyone cares about – it’s the hot dogs. Why would the best in the world sit out over a contract dispute, show up in the crowd and then rush the stage if it wasn’t planned?

It’s such a stupid sounding sport controversy you might be tempted to say “Only professional wrestling could be so fake.” But guess what, no longer is professional wrestling the biggest joke in sports. That title can now go to Major League Eating now that we know it exists.

Tags: Sports