Longtime rivals Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi will square off in a hot dog eating contest for the first time in 15 years at a September event that Netflix announced just one day after Chestnut was deemed ineligible to compete in this year’s Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.
Billed almost like a boxing match, “Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef” will stream live on Netflix on Sept. 2. Kobayashi, 46, had announced last month that he was stepping back from competitive eating due to health concerns. In a statement on Wednesday, he said he will retire only after taking down Chestnut “one last time.” Chestnut, 40, also played up their rivalry, calling Kobayashi his “fiercest rival” in a statement.
On Tuesday, Major League Eating announced that Chestnut, a 16-time Nathan’s Hot Dog champion, had been disqualified from the July competition because of a deal with Impossible Foods, a vegan meat brand. Chestnut said that he did not have a contract with the league or with Nathan’s and claimed they were “looking to change the rules from past years as it relates to other partners I can work with.”
Chestnut’s exclusion from the Nathan’s contest has been hard for the world of competitive eating to swallow. He had dominated the famous hot dog eating contest since 2007, when he beat Kobayashi by eating 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes. (His record is 76 hot dogs.) Kobayashi has not competed in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest since 2010, due to what he said at the time was organizers’ insistence that he abstain from other eating competitions. He and Chestnut last competed against each other in 2009, when Chestnut scarfed down 68 hot dogs to Kobayashi’s 64.5.
News that the two competitive eating greats will once again face off shocked and delighted fans. It’s a major coup by Netflix, which has been expanding into live sports. It also appears to have been hastily put together; NBC News reports that a location for the contest has not been set.
