TheScore.com has an interview with Takeru Kobayashi (via FreeKobayashi twitter), who has the following things to say about his former organization:

He also says that MLE has a tendency to send packages of eaters to particular events, with an eye towards tilting the balance towards favoured competitors.

“If they want one character to win [a particular contest]… They choose which [other] players are going to go there… and they can prevent other players who actually want be at that contest from going,” Kobayashi said through James.

That said, he’s quite emphatic in stating that he’s not accusing the competitive eating circuit of being fixed, just that the deck is occasionally stacked in favour of certain eaters.

“No, it’s not [fixed], but in their organization, on their terms… it’s close to being that way. They control it the way that they want it.”

The interview also mentions a thwarted deal with Johnsonville Sausages. (Kobayashi competed in an IFOCE Johnsonville bratwurst contest in 2006.)

“Johnsonville Sausages, for example, contacted Kobi and wanted to work with him… and he wanted to work with them, but he couldn’t,” James says. “They were holding him down, like ‘No… unless they go through us, you can’t work with them,’ which was heinous to him, because he had an agency in Japan that he was with… He didn’t belong to [MLE,] but they came up out of the blue and said ‘We own you, and we’re going to make people sign through us if they want anything to do with you.’”

The article lists Don Povia of HHR Media Group as Kobayashi’s manager. The HHR stands for HuggingHaroldReyndold.com, which Povia co-founded.

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Here are a list of the competitive eaters who have announced the number of eating challenges they completed in 2011. I will add other totals listed in the comments.

• 97, Naader Reda
• 47, Randy Santel
• 9, Andrew Lane

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The women’s top 10 poll is now open and can be voted on at http://eatfeats.com/rankings.php A list of money won by poll choices since the start of 2010 according to the eatfeats database is available after the jump:
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Lists of the current choices for the end of year polls for rookies and eating challengers are available after the jump. Please suggest others you think should be added in the contests. Read the rest of this entry »

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A list of the top calendar-year winning percentage in IFOCE / MLE contests is available after the jump. Kobayashi obviously has the top winning percentage of 100% for the years 2001-2006. Joey Chestnut in 2010 has the top percentage (81.25%) for someone competing in 10 or more contests. (He would have had a percentage of 85.7% (12/14) in 2011 if he won the CP Biggest eater qualifier). Percentages of 50% or more for people competing in at least four contests have been listed. The second column is number of wins, the third is number of contests and the fourth is the fraction of contests won.

The new poll asks what do you think is the best calendar year in IFOCE history.
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The MLE facebook announces that Pat Bertoletti was victorious in 18 MLE contests in 2011. (This apparently counts a victory over a team of amateurs in a pepperoni slice eating contest.) If you count every round of the US Open of Competitive eating as an individual contest, then Sonya Thomas exceeded that mark with 19 victories in 2005. A list of everyone with 10 or more victories in IFOCE/MLE contests in a calendar year according to the eatfeats database follows after the jump.

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Over the next several days, I will be posting lists of choices for the end of 2011 polls. The current set of polls follows after the jump. Suggest other poll ideas you think should be added in the comments.
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