"kobayashi" news and stories

Philadelphia Magazine writer Jason Fagone spent one year profiling some of the most divinely outsized personalities in the world of competitive eating. While Akron house painter Coondog O'Karma makes a midlife grab at glory via rapid-fire pizza consumption, Bill "El Wingador" Simmons attempts to reclaim Wong Bowl supremacy from 90lb Sonya "Black Widow" Thomas, and day trader Tim Janus dons the mantle of the mysterious Eater X, it all comes down to one shared hunger. They all want to win the Mustard Yellow Belt of International Hot Dog Eating Supremacy back from the Japanese who'd dominated the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog-Eating Contest nearly every year since 1997.

Back in July of 2001, that would mean beating the record of 25 1/8 set the previous year by Kazutoyo "The Rabbit" Arai.

That was before Takeru Kobayashi's 50 Dog Day.

Read an excerpt from Jason Fagone's Horsemen of the Esophagus on AOL Food

Here at Slashfood burgers have been on our foodar since May. Heck, now that we're into summer they're on everybody's mind, including the good citizens of Akron, Ohio, who hosted the National Hamburger Festival this past weekend.

The hefty hamburger above was cooked up this weekend, but not in Akron. Weighing in at 10 pounds, Big Bad Bubba's Double Wide hails from Huntington, W. Va. Specifically Hillbilly Hotdogs, which last year created a 5-pound burger known as, you guessed it, Big Bad Bubba's Single Wide.

This weekend HH added the BBDW to its menu. This massive sandwich may sport a 6.5-pound patty, but it's still less than one-sixth the weight of the largest burger I've ever heard of. Either way, I'd love to see Kobayashi take one down, if only so he could declare himself a big bad bubba, even if he is only half-wide.

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Who says there are no injuries in the world of competitive eating?

Sure, they might not have to deal with torn cartilege or a twisted ankle or a blown out knee, but what about jaw injuries? Takeru Kobayashi, the king of the annual Nathan's Famous July Fourth International Hot Dog Eating Contest, has arthritis of the jaw. He can't even open his mouth more than the size of a fingertip, but he's still going to enter the competition this year. Last year he ate a little over 53 hot dogs in 12 minutes.

Kobayashi isn't limited to hot dogs either. He once ate 97 hamburgers in eight minutes. The hell?

In the Krystal Square Off III World Hamburger Eating Contest in Chattanooga, Tennessee this past weekend, Takeru Kobayashi brought home another championship title by eating 97 hamburgers in 8 minutes. Joey Chestnut came in second, finishing with 91 hamburgers, followed by Patrick Bertoletti in third with 76. All the numbers are up hugely from last year's contest, in which Kobayashi narrowly beat Chestnut with a final total of 67-62 burgers. One other big change from previous years was that the contest was televised on ESPN2, which gives the sport a much wider audience and much more publicity than it enjoyed before.

The contest is known as the "square off" because the burgers that the competitors wolf down are square, but Krystal's burgers hosts the contest because they have been holding eating contests at their stores since the first one opened in 1932. According to company legend, the tradition was set when the second customer challenged the first customer to a head-to-head hamburger showdown.

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It's something of a mystery as to where the FOX network gets some of their programming ideas, so the original inspiration for this particular segment is anyone's guess. Since Takeru Kobayshi can out-eat just about anybody, FOX decided to have him face off against a Kodiak bear - an 8-ft tall, 1000-lb animal - in a hot dog eating competition.

The clip is pretty funny, actually. The announcers treat it almost like a wrestling match and the best line is when they start to talk about the bear's technique vs. Kobayashi's. "[The bear] has a very different approach to eating. See, he looks away and he takes a break. He doesn't know it's a competition. He's just a natural eating machine." For his part, Kobayashi definitely knew it was a competition and didn't take his eyes off the bear.

Who emerged victorious? You'll have to watch the clip to find out, but I will say that someone is already eagerly awaiting a rematch.

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