In the latest episode of Barstool Sports Pardon my Take podcast, Joey Chestnut announces that his MLE contract will expire at the end of this year and he is open to the possibility of a matchup with Takeru Kobayashi in 2023. (video clip)

The end of this year is going to be a weird year for me because my contract with Major League Eating and Nathan’s is going to be over. So it’ll be my first year in a long, long time that I can actually eat against Kobayashi. So me and him could find a way to compete because he’ll never compete with Major League Eating again because they have just a childish contract dispute, but there’s a chance that I might be able to eat against him.

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It is interesting that even after declining a MLE contract extension, Joey Chestnut still calls Takeru Kobayshi’s schism with the organization a “childish contract dispute”.

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Youtube currently has the full program of TV Tokyo’s “King of Gluttony” program in which Miki Sudo, Darron Breeden, Max Suzuki, Angela Sato, Hatsuyo Sugawara and others competed. (I will not post any spoilers until later today). Update Results of the final round are in the comments. Takeru Kobayashi and Nobuyuki Shirota appear as commentators, but do not compete.

update Jan 16 Miki Sudo has posted some Instagram galleries: Part 1 | Part 2

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It appears Takeru Kobayashi will be moving to Kyoto, Japan due to high New York City rent. He recently posted a picture of moving boxes on his twitter. Another tweet has the following automatic translation:

By the time you find a Kyoto townhouse you want to live in
And
For the time being, the room That Maggie decided to live in
In a room as small as New York,
Less than one-third of the rent
I feel like I’m being made a fool of by NY.

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Japan Times has an interview with Takeru Kobayashi about The Good, The Bad, The Hungry. He says that while he is pleased with the film, it did not fully convey his side of his dispute with MLE.

The documentary showed my rivalry with Joey Chestnut, but I had more of a problem with George Shea,” he says. “He used Joey Chestnut to conceal the fact that he had a problem with me. George Shea was employed by Nathan’s, so if you look at the bigger picture, the problem was really between me and Nathan’s. That doesn’t come across in the documentary.

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Here are the results for Takeru Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut in the 15 contests they competed against each other. Kobayashi had the higher finish in 8 of the competitions.
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Daily Beast has an interview with Takeru Kobayashi where he expands on recent critical comments made on twitter about Joey Chestnut:

If you ask me, do I want to compete with him? Mmm, not necessarily. I don’t even want to be in the same room with him. The face he gives you in the movie—he says something different every time, so it’s difficult for me to trust that those are his words, or if they’re George Shea’s scripted words, and where his feelings are coming from. It’s stressful for me to compete against, much less be around, a person who has that kind of personality. So I just choose not to be around him.

and George Shea:

It’s a manipulation game for him. If I always have to wonder what the truth is, or that they’re going to manipulate the truth when I’m taking something so seriously—I can’t be around a human that I can’t trust.

Kobayashi also mentions an upcoming alternative competitive eating league. He will attend a watch party for The Good, The Bad, The Hungry tonight at Rochelle’s in Manhattan.

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