Several video clips of Food Battle Club have been uploaded to youtube. Food Battle Club is the Japanese competitive eating program with the most expensive production values.

• Kobayashi & Takako Akasaka race down a sushi table
• Kobayashi drinks a liter of ice tea (and finishes 2nd), then eats sushi
• Kobayashi drinks 25 iced coffees in 5 minutes. This contest is preceded by an “auction” in which eaters announce how many iced coffees they can drink.
• Unknown eater drinks water bottle in under 5 seconds

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The Scotsman’s review of Horsemen of the Esophagus (which has been retitled Insatiable for the European edition) compares the Sheas to organ grinders and eaters to their animal employees. The reviewer claims that Eric “Badlands” Booker (who only makes a brief appearance) and “Coondog” O’Hara (sic) are major characters in the book, so it is debatable how closely he read Fagone’s work.

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Media Life Magazine’s article on sports broadcasts television ratings claims that viewership of Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest increased to 1.15 million from 660,000 last year.

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A myspace page has been set up at myspace.com/takerukobayashi. It is rather unlikely that this page was set up by the actual Kobayashi given his lack of fluency in English.
The profile lists Kobayashi as a Sagitarius, when Kobayashi was born March 15, 1978.

A myspace page has also been set up at myspace.com/sonyathomas This is listed as a fan page and not Sonya’s personal page, but that disclaimer is not very prominent.

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Jason has uploaded an interview of Sonya Thomas from Severe Magazine to his myspace blog.

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The long excerpt of “Horsemen of the Esophagus” from the May issue of Atlantic magazine has been moved to the free section of that publication’s website.

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The Pittsburgh Tribune review has an article about Denny’s Beer Barrell Pub’s new 50 pound burger, The Belly Bruiser. Lori Weiss is listed as a finisher of the 96er in the article. Denny’s weill be on the Food Network in November.

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Kate Stelnick and Lori Weiss might have a possible rival on the horizon. BullyRook has a picture of an unnamed woman (who looks a little like Mandy Moore) holding a four pound burger (I am not sure if this is the meat weight or total weight) which he claims she consumed without assistance (but he did not witness her finish it). The restaurant is not named either.

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The female record in the Nathan’s Wall of Fame is listed at 38 when it should be 37, which Sonya Thomas did the past two contest. The male record has already been updated to 53.7 (The sign only has one digit after the decimal point).

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Liz & Krista have posted their account of their experience at Nathan’s to urbanhonking.com/truefan

Megamunch has also posted his writeup and gallery

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from beautifulbrian.com bulletin

Harrah’s casino, Cherokee, NC

7/8 Results updated from sonyatheblackwidow.com

1. Sonya Thomas, 5.45 lb
2. Tim “Eater X” Janus, 4.3 lb
3. Dale Boone, 3.9
Rich LeFevre DQ

Hopefully this will shut Luther up for a while.

It will be interesting to see what extracurricular activities Dale Boone was involved in. Brian Seiken claims Boone and Loren “Bubba” Yarbrough almost came to blows in Memphis.

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Liz has some pictures of Robert Andersson’s girlfriend Anna, which show a competitor does not need to have Tiger Wood’s bank account to land a hot Swedish babe.

Robert & Anna
Anna assisting with the pre-contest sword swallowing 1
Anna assisting with the pre-contest sword swallowing 2

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The entry deadline for Moe’s Southwest Grill Burritos for Life contest is Monday. (Entrants cannot be ranked by any competitive eating organization)

Lori, who ate a three pound burrito in 1:30 in 2001 in an Orange County contest, could be a possible contender in Moe’s contest.

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If Dale Boone is looking to follow up his corndogorama victory with another local contest, a buffalo wing eating contest sponsored by Frank’s Red Hot will be held at Atlantic Station in Atlanta on Saturday.

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I will be away from my regular internet connection until Monday and new posting and comment approval will be sporadic and possibly non-existent. I have set up a pipeline with some new posts so there will be some fresh content for the blog during that period. If you need results from the NC rib contest, sonyatheblackwidow.com and/or beautifulbrian.com should have that information (and possibly even IFOCE.com). Also keep checking http://urbanhonking.com/truefan for Liz & Krista’s Coney Island writeup.

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NBC4 (Washington DC local news) interviewed Sonya Thomas after Nathan’s, which is mentioned in the station’s blog. Sonya said that she intended to do Friday’s rib contest at Harrah’s casino in Cherokee, NC. Dale Boone is also expected to compete in that contest and interesting (in the Chinese curse meaning of the word) things tend to happen when those two compete. I don’t believe that Sonya has ever lost in VA, DC, MD, DE or NC.

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At 10pm (eastern) The History Channel will broadcast an episode of American Eats about the history of the hot dog. There will be some information about Nathan’s hot dogs and competitive eating.

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IFOCE.com has posted a full list of Nathan’s results. Some observations:

• Jed Donahue only is listed with 1 HDB
• Kenji Oguni did 16 HDB, second to last, barely half of what he did in 2005.
• The European entrants did respectably with 20 and 18 HDB. I would not have expected the Europeans to both beat the Tokyo qualifier

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Google News combined with Google translation enables English-speakers to see what Japanese news organizations have to say about yesterday’s Nathan’s finals.

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I wondered what Joey Chestnut pointing to Kobayashi around the 10 minute mark signified, and this article in the San Francisco Chronicle says that Joey Chestnut was indicating that he believed that Kobayashi might have regurgitated at that time. Joey’s brother Patrick says that a quarter hot dog was found in Kobayashi’s cup. The article says that three additional eating contests will be televised on ESPN, which compensates for the loss of the US Open of Competitive Eating.

updated 7/5 3:11 pm – headline changed

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The Tribune Democrat of Johnstown, PA has an article about “Big” Brian Subich, who ate 22 hot dogs in yesterday’s Nathan’s finals. Subich is a former Johnstown city councilor.

In other Subich news, bigbrian.org has expired.

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ESPN360 has made the full video of the entire Nathan’s finals available at http://broadband.espn.go.com/ivp/splash?ceid=2509202
(At least it is available in theory, it hangs up on me before any footage is displayed. Maybe it will work better tonight when traffic is lighter.)

While waiting for the video to display, you can vote in ESPN’s poll asking what item could you most easily eat 54 of.

From Food Fighter Fan: cyberfyber has uploaded video to youtube he filmed of the contest and yesterday’s weigh in. His contest footage gives an idea of what was going on with all the eaters.

Contest Part I
Contest Part II
Weigh-In Part I
Weigh-In part II
Joey-Kobayashi stare down

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I will collect articles about the results of today’s Nathan’s hot dog eating contest in this post as they come online.

AP – from Newsday Kobayashi’s weight is listed at 160
NY1 article a video clip is also available
7/5 12:34 am Yahoo article, slideshow & video clip
Top 6 finishers Pat 34.5, Tim 34, Chip 33
(updated 7/5 5:49 pm Tim has emailed me and says that the article is incorrect and he ate 34)
1:56 am IronyMaiden has some nice pictures on her myspace site

Updated July 5 2:34
Liz’s gallery from July 3/4, also includes pictures from AICE hamburger contest
SJ Mercury article about Joey Chestnut, does not mention controversy
Megamunch eyewitness account blog entry
Gothamist blog entry
Another flickr gallery from before the contest
Sunset Parker meets Kobayashi & Kobayashi’s #1 fan

8:10
Vallejo Times Herald article about local boy Joey Chestnut
Picture of Sonya Thomas fans from SC
Liz reports back from Coney Island She does not expect to have her article up before the end of the week

July 11, 2:24 pm
North Korea Times on Kobayashi & Nathan’s
Montreal Gazette on Nathan’s finals
Houston Chronicle columnist attends Nathan’s finals
Claudine Ko (Jane Magazine) blog entry
Yomiuri (English) preview of Nathan’s

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Following the jump is a list of the top 5 every 30 seconds in today’s Nathan’s finals

Read the rest of this entry »

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Assuming that Kobayashi is now #1 and Joey Chestnut is now the clearcut #2, how would you rank the 3 eaters who ate 33 or more hot dogs in Nathan’s qualifiers?

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