ScreenRant.com has a post about director Tim Burton’s request for Joey Chestnut to have a cameo role in Beetlejuice 2. Chestnut turned down the offer to focus on training for a contest, most likely Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest in 2023.

During Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice 2 commentary feature, the director speaks about the creative nature of developing the latest batch of dead people seen in the afterlife. Among the group is a man who died during a hot dog-eating contest, one of the first afterlife characters Burton created, and someone Betelgeuse is sitting next to while in the waiting room in the sequel. Burton’s Beetlejuice 2 commentary reveals he actually wanted famous hot dog contest eater Joey Chestnut to play the afterlife character, but the competitor was too busy training for an upcoming event.

Burton shared that he was inspired by Chestnut’s record-breaking events when creating afterlife characters, so he decided to add someone who died as a result of eating too many hot dogs. When Beetlejuice 2 started filming, Chestnut would’ve been prepping to compete in the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest held every Fourth of July.

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Official results (10 minutes). James Webb was apparently disqualified.

James Webb is doing a livestream of today’s Padrino Foods World Tamale Eating Championship in Lewisville, TX.

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Jodi Walker wrote a long article (or short book?) for Ringer.com about the “Unfinished Beef” matchup between Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi that was streamed on Netflix on Labor Day. There will probably not that much new in it for people familiar with competitive eating other that some behind the scenes information about how the event was put togther. Nicole Haimes, director of the 2019 documentary about the Chestnut / Kobayashi rivalry “The Good, the Bad, the Hungry” was also the executive producer of “Unfinished Beef”.

But there was still one speed bump: “When negotiating for this whole thing, Chestnut and I with Netflix, we were talking about the possibility of doing this on Fourth of July,” Kobayashi tells me. That would have meant not competing in the Nathan’s competition in 2023, which Joey refused to do (62 hot dogs in 10 minutes). “So I thought, well, if he doesn’t have respect for me, then I don’t think I want to compete against him,” says Kobayashi. Haimes fortunately managed to rope him back into the deal with Netflix by suggesting that they couldn’t “let the perfect get in the way of the good.” Kobayashi relented and even said that Chestnut could compete in the Nathan’s contest in 2024 if he wanted. They would simply find a different (slightly less patriotic) date for their one-on-one. “But then he was banned from the Nathan’s competition, ironically,” Kobi smirks.

After MLE contracts worked against them for years, a contract dispute finally worked in their favor. Kobi and Joey were at Netflix. And people were excited.

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update Full results

Results from Aaron Cohen live video
1 Geoff Esper 44.5 pork rolls (10 minutes)
2 James Webb 44.25
3 Nick Wehry 42.5
4 Tanner Gray 20.25
5 George Chiger 19

James Webb is running a livestream of today’s Trenton Thunder World Famous Case’s Pork Roll Eating Championship.

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Joey Chestnut has defeated Kobayashi 83 hot dogs to 67 to set a world record for a 10 minute hot dog contest.

In the first undercard, Matt Stonie defeated three aquatic Olympians (Ryan Lochte, Ryan Murphy and Max Irving) in a 3 minute wing eating contest, 53 wings to 36.

Some links about Unfinished Beef
Decider has an interview with Takeru Kobayashi
Brobible has an interview with Chestnut and Kobayashi
NYTimes article

Netflix has an instagram post about the Chestnut / Kobayashi rivalry with two major errors: Kobayashi did not reverse in the 2007 Krystal Square Off, he missed it due to “jawthritis” and Kobayashi did not compete in the 2010 Nathan’s finals, he attended as a spectator and was arrested afterwards.

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Here are the all time head to head results for Joey Chestnut vs. Takeru Kobayashi. They have faced 15 times from 2005 to 2010; Kobayashi finished ahead in 8 of the matchups. (This excludes the 2005 US Open of Competitive Eating, a 32 entrant tournament won by Kobayashi in which he did not face Chestnut.)
Read the rest of this entry »

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