Bertoletti wins after Joey Chestnut debacle
Patrick Bertoletti, Geoffrey Esper and different contestants compete within the 2024 Nathan’s Well-known Fourth of July Worldwide Scorching Canine Consuming Contest at Coney Island in New York Metropolis, U.S., July 4, 2024.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
There is a new high canine within the frankfurter consuming world.
Patrick Bertoletti gained Nathan’s Scorching Canine Consuming Contest, the annual competitors held on July 4, marking the tip of an period after 16-time winner Joey Chestnut’s falling out with the occasion’s organizer, Main League Consuming.
Bertoletti, 39, from Illinois, consumed 58 scorching canine on this 12 months’s 10-minute occasion, incomes him the Mustard Yellow Belt within the males’s class. Miki Sudo set a brand new report within the girls’s division with 51 wieners downed. After the meat between Chestnut and MLE, the competition was thought of way more vast open than previously a number of years.
MLE introduced final month that it was parting ways with Chestnut, citing a rule that contributors can not strike endorsement offers with rivals of scorching canine maker Nathan’s. MLE alleged on the time that Chestnut had partnered with a plant-based meat different firm. Chestnut, often known as “Jaws,” has lately begun posting images on Instagram that characteristic Not possible Meals.
“For almost twenty years we’ve got labored underneath the identical fundamental scorching canine exclusivity provisions,” the MLE mentioned in a press release in June. “Nevertheless, it appears that evidently Joey and his managers have prioritized a brand new partnership with a unique scorching canine model over our long-time relationship.”
Miki Sudo reacts as she wins girls’s division of the 2024 Nathan’s Well-known Fourth of July Worldwide Scorching Canine Consuming Contest at Coney Island in New York Metropolis, U.S., July 4, 2024.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Chestnut responded in a statement on the time that he was “gutted to study from the media” of his banishment after 19 years. The 40-year-old claimed he didn’t have a contract with MLE or Nathan’s, and mentioned the endorsement ban was a departure from the group’s guidelines round partnerships in prior years.
“I like competing in that occasion, I like celebrating America with my followers throughout this nice nation on the 4th and I’ve been coaching to defend my title,” he mentioned final month.
Whereas the connection seems fried in the meanwhile, the MLE known as Chestnut an “American hero” and mentioned it might “love” for him to return when not representing a Nathan’s competitor. Chestnut holds consuming data in 55 classes, together with eggs, rooster wings and apple pies, the MLE told NBC News.
Nathan’s web site additionally nonetheless showers Chestnut in reward. In a section saying his 2023 win, the New York-based firm wrote that “there is no doubt in our thoughts who’s the king.”
Folks put on scorching canine outfits, as they attend the 2024 Nathan’s Well-known Fourth of July Worldwide Scorching Canine Consuming Contest, at Coney Island, in New York Metropolis, U.S., July 4, 2024
Kent J. Edwards | Reuters
Throughout ESPN’s broadcast of the 2024 contest, the channel made a number of mentions of Chestnut and what the competitors appears like with out him. In a single reference, Chestnut was known as the “Warren Buffett of the buffet.”
Chestnut followers can nonetheless see him in motion this vacation.
He is livestreaming a scorching canine consuming contest from the Fort Bliss military base in Texas as a fundraiser for charity, in keeping with a recent Instagram post. The present begins at 5 p.m. ET on Thursday.
“The 4th would not be the identical if I wasn’t celebrating by consuming an entire lot of all-beef scorching canine,” he wrote.
