Chestnut Sets New Mutton Sandwich World Record In Dominant Display!

Owensboro, KY If this were a simple one-paragraph write up about a recently completed sporting event, the first sentence would go like this: Joey Chestnut, the #1-ranked eater in the world, ate 81 quarter-pound chopped mutton sliders to win the 2018 Owensboro International Bar-B-Q Festival World Mutton Sandwich-Eating Championship, held in Owensboro, KY, on Saturday, May 12, 2018. The second sentence would acknowledge that this total marked a new world record in the discipline, possibly comparing and contrasting the feat of 81 sandwiches in 10 minutes with the previous mark, also posted by Chestnut, of 55. If column space remained, the writer would note that Geoffrey Esper ate 53 sandwiches for second and that Gideon Oji ate 52.5 for third. And that’d be that. All good. Nothing more to see here. Journalism 101.

But that is not the world we wish to inhabit and so we don’t. Competitive eating stirs something in all of us that demands a more robust and passionate declaration. Why trade in minutiae—the dull drip of numbers and times—when the skies are broad and the world’s greatest symphony is ringing in your ears and you can feel the very blood in your heart? It was one of those days, people.

Joey Chestnut simply proved himself once more to be the greatest eater known unto God himself. No one since the dawn of time has done—and continues to do—what he does at the table. It is brutal. It is savage. It is mastery. It is control. It is violent. It is precise. It is unrelenting. It knows your name and it knows where you live. If you step to it, it will have its vengeance and that vengeance will be swift and that vengeance will be final. You will know your place, be told your place, or be taught your place. Your call. Pick a box.

So, yeah. That’s what happened.

FULL RESULTS! 1. Joey Chestnut 81, new WR 2. Geoff Esper 53 3. Gideon Oji 52.5 4. Derek Jacobs 31 5. Matt Hazzard 27 6. Matthew Raible 18.5 7. Steve Martin 13 8. Dylan Carpenter 9.5 9. Dee Martin 9 10. John Wells 9 11. Adam Coleman and Garrett Ingleheart 8