According to a comment made this morning, Micah “Wing Kong” Collins was told that “professionals” would not be allowed to compete in Wing Bowl 17 when he called 610 WIP to inquire about qualifying for that contest. In February, Angelo Cataldi said that he would like to limit entry to the 2009 Wing Bowl to amateurs. WIP appears to have followed through with that restriction.

Cataldi apparently defines “professional eater” as someone who has been associated with a professional eating organization regardless of the level of success obtained in eating contests. If that definition is used to limit entry into Wing Bowl 17, “Gentleman” Jerry Coughlan will probably be the favorite if there is any legitimacy to his top five finishes the previous two Wing Bowls.

In other Wing Bowl news, a press release announces that mail-order chicken wings endorsed by Bill “El Wingador” Simmons will be available at RastelliAtHome.com

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• Megamunch announces that he is retiring from blogging. Thanks for your efforts, MM.
• Article and gallery from 12 pound team pizza challenge attempt in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The article reports that a single competitive eater from Menahsa (probably Mike Fitzgerald) ate 3/4 of the pizza.
• Video from the Battle at the Big Apple pizza eating contest
• Wing Eating contest in Harrisburg, PA November 28. First prize is a Nintendo Wii
• Picture of Blondie’s (Winnipeg, Canada) burger menu which lists a 9 pound burger for $62.95
• Muscatine, Iowa taco eating contest Saturday. Entrants must receive at least $75 in pledges.

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TwinCities.com reports that the 5-8 Grill in Maplewood, Minnesota created a 145 pound “Juicy Lucy” burger on Saturday containing a 100 pound beef patty filled with 50 pounds of cheese. (100 pounds must be the pre-cooked weight since the sum of the beef and cheese weighs less than the listed sandwich weight.)

The burger was submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records under the assumption that the current record holder is a 78.5 pound sandwich created by Bob’s BBQ and Mexican Grill in Thailand. Denny’s Beer Barrel and Mallie’s Sports Grill & Bar in Michigan have requested Guinness recognition for larger burgers. Mallie’s website reports that it created a 164.5 pound burger in August, beating the giant Juicy Lucy by almost 20 lbs., which will appear in the next edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.

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The Telegraph reports that Denzil Gunner, a 30 year old solicitor from London, won a prize of £1,000 at today’s mince pie eating contest at Wookey Hole Caves in England. Gunner’s mark of 41 pies in 10 minutes missed the record Sonya Thomas set in 2006 by five pies.

It is not mentioned in the article if the pies used this year were the same size as the pies used two years ago. The pictures above from the Telegraph’s gallery show that the pies used in 2006 might have been larger.

The BBC also has an article.

update Times Online article, ITN video

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• Video of Kobayashi’s TV appearance after he defeated Joey Chestnut in Singapore
• The Man vs. Food message board on travelchannel.com has some eating challenges I was not aware of
• Presentation about competitive eating tonight at a benefit for the Brooklyn greenway
• Sheep’s butt eating challenge on The Amazing Race
• Video of Hatsuyo Sugawara’s victory in this spring’s okonomiyaki eating contest
• New Jersey pasta eating contest report
• Video of a high school cross country team’s pizza eating contest – results: #1 Caleb 27 slices, #2 Miranda 20 slices

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Jill Stoler has a blog entry about Saturday’s get together at the J & R Steakhouse. The results from the 76 ounce steak challlenge:

Joel “The Cannon” Podelsky, 57 minutes
Paul “Porkslap” Arcaria, DQ

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A video and galleries by angrysong and someguynamedcarlfrom Saturday’s Carninval O Pizza eating contest at the Home Slice Pizza. The picture captions indicate that Chris (no last name provided) won the contest for the third straight year. A Tic-Tac-Toe T-shirt was made to outfit Chris’ entourages, which is one of the larger fan groups competitive eating

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A video of the noodle eating contest held on TV Tokyo’s TV Champion to determine who would win a berth in the 2001 Nathan’s finals is available on youtube. Takeru Kobayashi would win the contest and subsequently make history at Coney Island. Kaz Arai, winner of the 2000 Nathan’s finals, is present at the contest. Kobayashi’s latest blog entry is about Arai.

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Seven sports (baseball, softball, golf, karate, roller sports, rugby and squash) made their case to be included in the 2016 Olympics. Competitive eating was not among them. Chicago and Tokyo are considered the leading candidates to land the games.

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A comment on Megamunch reports that the towel Megamunch misplaced and subsequently acquired by a consortium called “The Light Elves” is now up for auction on craigslist. The bidding will start at $1 and will close on December 1.

The value Megamunch places on his towel brings to mind the following quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc, etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

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The purpose of the new poll is to see if there is any demand for a competitive eating / eating challenge get-together outside of New York and Pennsylvania. The choices in the list were based on known locations of readers/commenters. Other locations can be added to the poll if requested.

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A live blog is currently being conducted for tonight’s screening of the 2005 Wing Bowl documentary “Swallow Your Pride”. At least two (and possibly three) of the six protagonists of the film are in attendance.

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MyHomeTownNews.com has a report on last Saturday’s pizza eating contest at the Battle at the Big Apple in Fort Pierce, Florida. The Bahamas cruise that was part of Pat Bertoletti’s prize package includes a 24 hour pizza buffet.

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Country music superstar Toby Keith has a restaurant at Harrah’s casino in Las Vegas which offers a 100 ounce eating challenge. In addition to two pounds of hamburger, the challenge also requires diners to finish 32 ounces of beer and 16 ounces of “freedom fries” along with other items. Customers who complete the challenge will receive a T – shirt. A picture of the burger is available on flickr. With the demise of the Plaza Casino’s Big Daddy challenge, this might be the only burger challenge in Las Vegas.

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(From Kevin Ross email) A web page has been set up for the Travel Channel series Man vs. Food. The program will feature Adam Richman traveling around the country to attempt restaurants’ eating challenges. The first two episodes will be televised on December 3 and the locations will be Amarillo, Texas (Big Texan Steak Ranch) and Memphis (The Big Foot Lodge). A list of all locations is available on the website.

Earlier this year, a producer placed a casting call on eatfeats for a host for the show.

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• Interview with director Josh Camerote about “Swallow Your Pride”
• Female bodybuilder Isabelle Turell has signed with the WLOCE according to WLOCE.com
• Kobayashi does a pudding eating contest to promote the “Angry Kid” DVD release (this might be the first contest in Japan Kobayashi has done since the last Food Battle Club in 2002)
• Central Michigan University wing eating contest report
• Wing Bowl 17 tickets are already for sale on Craigslist even though they have yet to become available to the general public
• Ben & Jerry’s Vermonster eating contest in Singapore December 6
• Austin, TX pizza eating contest Saturday
• Monique Griffin wins a pizza eating contest at Luke Air Force Base

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After being down for approximately 6 weeks, SonyaTheBlackWidow.com is now back online. Neither the website hiatus nor Sonya’s future plans are mentioned on the news & notes page.

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A yelp post announces an untimed eating contest based on the number of plates consumed will be held at the Garden Buffet BBQ & Seafood in Artesia, California tomorrow night. Yuki M, who claims to have eaten 7,000 calories a day at her height of training as a powerlifter, will represent the XX chromosome in that event. An older post about the contest is also available.

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(From NoLandGrab) A competitive eating hall of fame is one of three suggestions offered by the Atlantic Yards Report to the Imagine Coney initiative. The hall of fame would include a restaurant that would offer an eating challenge.

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Tomoko Miyake reports in her blog that Hatsuyo “the Witch” Sugawara has started a blog at ameblo.jp/withwitch. The blog began on Sunday and there are already 16 entries which are more about books than competitive eating. Sugawara has also posted a questionnaire (her favorite movie is “A League of Their Own”)

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Beautiful Brian has posted a video from his lunch today at the Todai sushi buffet with Crazy Legs Conti, Nate Biller and Leon Feingold.

Zach of Midtown Lunch was also present, and he will have a report on the meal tomorrow.

update Nov 12 – a Midtown Lunch blog entry and gallery have been posted

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• English language tribute to Gal Sone
• Videos of Lynchburg, VA Dickey’s BBQ qualifier
• Forney, TX Christmas pie eating contest December 6 (open only to Forney residents) first prize is a large flat screen TV
• Kobayashi dyes his hair green
• Request for Atlanta area Tostino’s Pizza Roll eating contest competitor
• Picture of Juris Shibayama at the Nashville Krystal qualifier
• B. C. Pizza (MI, GA & KY) to offer Sarge pizza challenge

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A mini-documentary about Eric “Badlands” Booker produced by Richard Trammell for an NYU documentary class has been uploaded to youtube. Badlands talks about returning to competitive eating after a two year hiatus and also displays his collection of trophies.

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Sports Hochi’s article about Hatsuyo “The Witch” Sugawara’s victory in the Morioka noodles contest names Sonya Thomas as a rival to Sugawara (automatically translated)

“All Japan Championships Wanko-soba” in 2006 and second in his debut, “than other people to eat fast,” said Sugawara thin and we were aware, the current path led to the “origin” of the tournament. “(Food Fight), which is doing, maybe! Happy when the倒SETARA happy,” said the U.S. Food Fighter of the woman, Lee Sun-kyung’s Sonya Thomas-American name of the game .

It is not clear from the article if a contest between “The Witch” and “The Black Widow” is imminent. This blog entry says that Sonya Thomas is planning to challenge Sugawara.

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A mini-documentary about Kevin Carr competing in the Zyng noodles contest held in Columbus, Ohio in 2004 has been uploaded to youtube. Kevin ate more noodles than anyone else at the event, but did not receive the victory.

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