No results from Saturday’s Skin’s hot dog eating contest at the Great Southeast Balloon Festival appear to have been posted on WLOCE.com

The location for the second Skin’s hot dog contest on September 12 is not explicitly listed. It is probably the Chattahoochee Mountain Fair based on the logo.

The new poll asks how many non-IFOCE eaters will be in the top 10 cash prize winners of 2008 at the end of the year. There are currently 4 non-IFOCE eaters in the top 10: Joe Menchetti, “Furious” Pete Czerwinski, Ian Hickman and Dale Boone.

WLOCE.com announces that registration is now open for a hot dog eating contest that will take place at the Great Southeast Balloon Fest on Sunday, August 30. The calendar for the festival’s website says that the competition will occur on Saturday, August 30 and Hooters will sponsor a wing eating contest the following Sunday. The purse for the hot dog contest is $850 $875. Dale Boone and Jason Skrzypek are expected entrants.

The balloon festival will take place in Anderson, South Carolina which is near Clemson University. Crazy Legs Conti wore a Clemson pin in this year’s Nathan’s finals.

Peter Smith, who encountered Dale Boone on a trip to India, has returned to Seattle and reports on his myspace page that he is now the West Coast representative for Boone’s World League of Competitive Eating.

In other WLOCE news, Keatin Shelton, runner-up to Boone in the Apple Ugly eating contest, is now listed in the WLOCE rankings.

• Hall Hunt article in U of Florida student paper. Hall had a bad knee while he ran a marathon last Saturday. An article about Erin Andrews appears in the same issue.
• Crazy Legs Conti and Tim Janus appear in music video by Low Water (myspace)
• Wing Tut previews the contests he will MC this weekend. Samatha Brown of the Travel Channel might compete in the Italian sausage contest.
• MissBusyLady contemplates a Burritozilla attempt
• News items after May 8 removed from IFOCE home page
• Article about Randy Harrison, participant in the US Open of Competitive Eating
• WLOCE registration is open (from Crawfish comment)
• MTV’s video game blog has footage of the first two minutes of the MLE game
• Blog entry about Pauliesaurus challenge. The current prize is $250.

An anonymous commenter noted that a profile page for Jason Skrzypek, ranked #5 on WLOCE.com, has been added to that website. Jason Skrzypek is listed in the eatfeats database, which reports he finished 9th in the 2006 Atlanta Krystal Square Off qualifier.

A comment by Crawfish contained a link about Dale Boone’s victory in the corndog eating contest at Corndogorama. In the pictures, Dale Boone is wearing a World League of Competitive Eating baseball cap and has a shirt with a .com address. Trying WLOCE.com reveals that a website has been set up at that address. The site has a standings list which Dale Boone leads. P.Thayagarajan, mentioned as an Indian giant and a possible entrant in last year’s Nathan’s finals on IFOCE.com, is #6. Most of the links on the page are inoperable, but a contact page and safety guidelines are available.

update The Salisbury Post has a report about Dale Boone’s victory in the Apple Ugly qualifier last night

According to the IFOCE.com contest list page (along with the St. Pat’s Chowdown page), $28250 has been awarded in contests so far this year, while $51750 was the sum of the cash prizes for the first half of last year, resulting in a 45% decrease.

There were 3 contests with a 5 digit purse in the first half of 2007 ($10,000 Long Beach chili cheese fries, $15,000 St. Pat’s Chowdown, $10,000 shoo fly pie), while $5,000 is the largest purse so far this year.

The comparison does not attempt take into account the value of non-cash prizes. There were two contests with non-cash awards (not counting Wing Bowls) in the first six months of 2007 (TripRewards wings and the amateur shoo fly pie contest) while all contests so far this year have cash prizes.

The decline in the second quarter (2007:$21750 vs. 2008:$16750) was considerably less than the difference for the first three months of the year (2007:$30,000 vs 2008:11,500)

A listing of the contests and their prizes follows after the jump.

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Here are top 10 states for IFOCE contests since the start of 2003 according to the eatfeats database. The list includes scheduled contests.

80 NY
*51 NV
23 CA
23 PA
22 TN
21 GA
19 FL
19 NJ
19 TX
11 AZ

*(Nevada has 21 contests if the US Open is counted as a single contest and not 31 individual matchups)

A listing of the remaining states follows after the jump:
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The dates on which the previous 5 IFOCE top 50 rankings were released and the durations between them are listed below.

The current gap of 251 days (8 months and a week) since the most recent ranking on July 8, 2007 now exceeds the previous longest gap between the five rankings, which was 242 days between November 8, 2006 and July 8, 2007.

July 8, 2007 - 242 day gap
November 8, 2006 - 106 day gap
July 25, 2006 - 116 day gap
March 31, 2006 - 198 day gap
September 14, 2005

The table above gives the total number of IFOCE contests in the eatfeats database for the years 2003-2007. (Click on the number to see the list) Every matchup in the US Open of Competitive Eating or the title rallies counts as a contest, which contributes to 2005 having the most contests. I am going to try to get the database to count the total number of IFOCE events each year, defining event as a date and site that had one or more contests.

BeautifulBrian.com reports that Ray “The Bison” Meduna claims that the Laredo jalapeno prediction appearing on IFOCE.com was not the prediction he sent to IFOCE:

After reading the final column which appeared on CEN on Feb 25th , Ray Meduna was obviously quite upset. “I didnt say anything about doughting me at their own peril or that crap. I was set up by Livingston and Rich and i am disturbed by this. Meduna knew Bertoletti was the favorite and basically write about why he thinks Erik is good with hot foods.
Meduna would like the competitive eating world to know that the column the IFOCE wrote on his prediction was doctored by Rich Shea because Meduna claims he wrote an entirely different article.

I will post the original prediction on this website if it is emailed to me.

With 4 events on its calendar, the Denver eating contest meetup group has as many scheduled events as the IFOCE upcoming contest list. Contests will generally be held on Friday night:

Fri Feb 15, 7:00 PM Chili Dawg Challenge
Fri Feb 29, 7:00 PM Slyder Slugfest
Fri Mar 7, 7:00 PM Otis Spunkmeyer Cookie Chow
Mon Mar 17, 7:00 PM St Patty’s Corned Beef & Cabbage Carnage

The new poll asks who you think is the leading candidate to be named the IFOCE rookie of the year at the 2008 Nathan’s finals. I am defining rookie as someone who emerged in 2007.

A press release announces that Mastiff Games has acquired the rights to make a video game based on Major League Eating.

Major League Eating: The Game features the world’s greatest gurgitory athletes competing across twelve different food types. Built much like a fighting game, MLE: The Game requires players to show brilliant on-screen eating; a mastery of offensive and defensive weapons including burps, belches, and mustard gas; and of course the technical mastery necessary to avoid emptying one’s stomach in a vividly colored reversal of fortune.

ifoce.com has no additional information except for a link in the sidebar to the Mastiff home page. The platforms and expected release date for the game were not announced.

It will be interesting to see how much eaters receive, if any, for use of their electronic likenesses.

update This AFP article reports that Mastiff hopes to release the game in time for the July 4 Nathan’s finals.

Kotaku has a blog entry with 77 comments currently

Japanese article about the game

update #2 ripten has an interview with game developer Bill Swartz He says that eaters will have signature moves (Will the “Baby Bird” be one of them? ) and evades the question of whether game characters will be based on real world eaters.

update #3 The San Jose Mercury reports that Joey Chestnut will appear in the game.

update #4 SoupyTrumpet produced a demo of the game box (see above)

Fox Business has an article about the economics of competitive eating with quotes from George Shea, Arnie “Chowhound” Chapman and Crazy Legs Conti.

The article reports that the IFOCE has five full time employees. Shea claims that the 2007 Nathan’s hot dog contest produced $100 million worth of media for the restaurant chain. Joey received %0.01 corrected percent of that amount ($10,000) as his first place prize, which might be why has yet to commit to the defense of his title.

The article lists Chapman as the winner of the 1991 Nathan’s contest:

Chapman, a 46-year-old better known in the eating world as “Chowhound,” holds the record for downing the most pickles. He ate 2.94 pounds of sweet hard sour pickles in 3 minutes and 45 seconds.

“Sometimes I don’t know what I am thinking, it’s such an unforgiving food, ” Chapman said. Chapman won the Nathan’s contest in 1991 by eating 11.5 dogs in six minutes, which today seems like a meager amount.

According to a recent email, the person in the gray shirt cropped out of the above two pictures was the top finisher in a recent qualifier for WPLR’s Eat the Meat II chicken wing contest with a result of 80 wings in 9 minutes. Due to having previously competed in a Nathan’s qualifier, the winner was not only prohibited from competing in the January 26 finals, he was excised from the radio station’s website pictures above. The contest rules have the following restrictions for “professional” eaters:

Professional eaters, persons recognized by AICE , the IFOCE or members of any professional eating organization or participants in any professional eating competition are not eligible. The decision of professional eater status will be determined by a WPLR Eat the Meat Official and is final.

If former competitors in a professional eating competition are not eligible, then this restriction could be interpreted as prohibiting all competitors in last year’s “Eat the Meat” contest (who were allowed to compete) as it awarded a prize of $1,000. The original winner (whose name was not given in the email) might have a basis for filing an FCC complaint.

Joe Menchetti won a qualifier for last year’s contest, and was also prohibited from competing in the finals.

The final qualifier will take place on January 24 and requires Connecticut residency to enter.

update I received an email from the original winner of the qualifier, Michael Springer. He competed Nathan’s East Hartford Qualifier and came in fifth with 17.5 HDB and also the Ash Creek Ribs contest where he finished second to last with 1.8 lbs. He informed the radio station of those contests and they said that would not block his participation. After he won the qualifier, the radio station disqualified him for being a “professional” eater despite not having won any prizes in his previous contests.

It has now been one month since a bogus list of Major League Baseball players who were reportedly in the Mitchell report appeared on competitiveeatingnews.com Despite inclusion of names such as Albert Pujols and Johnny Damon that did not appear in the actual report, no corrections or other updates have been made to the CE News list in the previous month.

Rich Shea’s interview on the January 5 Phantom Gourmet radio show mentioned by GJoe in a comment is available online. The interview is mainly about the buffet controversy in Louisiana, but Rich Shea does say that the next IFOCE event will be a Major League Eating program televised on Spike TV at halftime of the Super Bowl (Rich predicts that the Cowboys will be the NFC representative for that game). The program will be 30 minutes long, so “Ham & Eggs” will need to be truncated if it is broadcast.

A listing of all IFOCE contests in the eatfeats database held in November or December follows after the jump. Even though the winter is often called the IFOCE “offseason”, there has been at least three contests in the last two months of the previous four years.

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A list of Major League Baseball players expected by “a team of Competitive Eating News reporters and one CEN web editor” to be in the Mitchell report about performance enhancing drugs in baseball appears on CompetitiveEatingNews.com. Some of the players, such as Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada and Andy Pettite actually appear in the report, but some, including Albert Pujols, Jeff Bagwell and Johnny Damon, are not present.

update Note the similarity of the CE News list with the list in comment #2 of this baseballthinkfactory thread

update #2 AOL FanHouse has more on the bogus list.
The full CE News list follows after the jump:
Read the rest of this entry »

Jill Stoler says she will be competing in Japan with several other AICE eaters from December 13 to December 19 on her myspace page.

AICE news has possible matchups. One of the American eaters is “Baby Doll” Deptkowitz.

The new poll asks what month you think the next IFOCE contest will take place that is not related to the Wing Bowl or Nathan’s hot dog contest.

According to the eatfeats database, last month was the first month since March 2003 in which no IFOCE/MLE contests were held.

The associated press reports that Tim Janus ate an entire Thanksgiving meal to draw attention to New York City’s hungry. The article reports that Major League Eating has given $10,000 to hunger related charities over the past two weeks.