Coney Island Hot Dog Champ

Joey "Jaws" Chestnut went to Coney and took back the mustard yellow championship belt that he'd lost in a hiccup last year after 8 consecutive wins.

Joey, a San Jose, Ca. native, not only paid back reigning champion Matt Stonie for ending his 8 year winning streak, but Jaws broke a competition record by chomping down 70 hot dogs. 

Congratulations Joey! Way to represent the Bay Area.

As for that legendary eating machine that got my Competitive Eating attention, Takeru Kobayashi, he hasn't touched a Nathan's Hotdog in years. In 2010 he was handcuffed and arrested for trying to crash the Nathan's July 4th stage. Kobayashi's story about his break from Nathan's can be found on Fansided's OutsideTheGame.com: 

On The Fourth Of July, Takera Kobayashi Checks America's Pulse

The article is very interesting and makes us Kobayashi fans just a bit prouder to be rooting for his success. Unfortunately, it paints Nathan's Hot Dogs and it's competition as just another money hungry/contractual controlling corporation who'll stoop to inciting race hating and nationalism to promote their annual event.  Kobayashi found out the hard way that the majority of his true American supporters were from so-called American "minority groups."  

Kobayashi says about Nathan's Hotdog: "They were selling the American against the Japanese. And that wasn't something that I wanted. That was something that they branded"

Exiled from competitive eating's biggest stage, Kobayashi forges on - by Ben Baskin 

I'm still in search of a "FRee Kobi" t-shirt.