
The Kent County Times has an article about the pumpkin contest in Rhode Island between mixed gender pairs from the United States and Japan which describes the origin of the event:
Emi Umeda, who works with the production crew, said the name of the show translates to “Anything is possible,” and she said the point of the show is to take a topic, find who’s best in the world at it and challenge them to a contest against Japan.
One of the topics is a pumpkin-eating contest, she said, which will pit two professional American eaters against two professional Japanese eaters, making their way through five different pumpkin dishes.
In order to get started, the show wanted to find who held the record for growing the largest pumpkin in the world, which happened to be Coventry resident Ron Wallace, who owns a farm at 860 Plainfield Pike.
The American female made her competitive debut according to the article:
The Japanese contestants are Tomoko Miyake and Nobuyuki Shirota and the American contestants are “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti of Wallingford, Conn., and Elizabeth “Rubber Gut” Kennedy from Florida.
“This is my first time doing this,” Kennedy said. “I made some inquiries on the Internet just out of curiosity and interest and they gave me a call.”
The article verifies reports of a US victory:
Since it may be difficult for American viewers to tune into the show to see the results, St. Jean said the American team ended up easily outpacing the team from Japan.
update BigPumpkins.com has some pictures of the contest (bottom of page) One of the pictures is captioned:
At the Wallaces on August 21, 2007, Gentleman Joe, urges his teamate to down more Pumpkin Lobster and Pumpkin pizza. She ate an entire Large Pumpkin Pizza and 2 lb Pumpkin Lobster in 3 minutes. But that was just the appetizer.
update #2 The BigPumpkins.com message board has some threads about the contest: Thread 1, Thread 2, Thread 3
update #3 Dec 26, 2007 The quoted article spelled Elizabeth’s last name incorrectly. The correct spelling is Canady.