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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