“Fifty Shades of Brown”: The Ins and Outs of Competitive Eating, with Joey Chestnut

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

50 Shades of Brown, brother.

50 Shades of Brown.

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How vividly do you remember the 2006 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest?

I was 22 years old, and

that was the year I lost.

That is the voice of Joey Chestnut, the greatest competitive eater of all time.

Also, the very first person I ever interviewed as a Sports Illustrated intern

18 years ago.

I'd been doing good in practice going into it, and I just got nervous.

As we approach the halfway point,

six minutes, seven seconds to go.

Joey is pushing himself right now.

You can see he's got a little bit of a shake, perhaps a synaptic misfiring, but he is a trained eater.

There is a lot of eating to go.

We are at the wall.

I was sitting 10 feet away from you, watching you on stage.

Joy Chestnut doing everything he can, continuing with his style, continuing to shovel it down.

Somewhat maniacal jaw movement, but uh, Kobiashi again,

realizing that he has a little bit of a lead, and it's all about the wins.

Obviously, not looking to prove something.

He lost by two.

I want to say 54,

and I did 52.

Four, three, two, one, look at it.

Here we go.

And Kobiashi

takes it again.

Unbelievable, but Joey Chestnut.

Dude, do you remember just the emotions you felt after you realized that you were two HDBs, hot dogs plus buns short?

I remember eating next to him and feeling like, oh my God, I'm not catching him.

It's a terrible feeling knowing that like

you're just not, you don't have it that day.

I i know i should be eating faster and i'm sure other athletes whether they're runners or whether whether they're pitchers whether they're throwing a ball is just not going where they want it to go and my swallows weren't working right i mean everything was pouring out of you in some form i assume as soon as this thing was over but just tears i just remember seeing your your face the pain seemed emotional as opposed to the physical one that I might have assumed, having never seen a thing like this before.

It's something that I have to remember also.

I

don't want to get complacent.

Just because I'm breaking records in practice doesn't mean that my competitor isn't.

And he's going to be pushing hard too.

I have to keep pushing hard.

It's actually really good to remember the times where my body didn't cooperate.

So I need to reinforce all the things that I've done throughout the years.

Okay, so you should just be aware that in the years since I watched Joey Chestnut compete at that Nathan's hot dog contest back in 2006,

the guy has achieved a truly horrifying level of gastrointestinal dominance.

In 2007, 2007, for instance, the very next year, Joey dethroned the incumbent champion, his rival, the legendary Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, and then he proceeded to break 55 different world-eating records.

But on July 4th of this year, as you may have noticed, neither Joey nor Kobayashi was in the Nathan's contest in their usual place on the corner of Surf and Stilwell Avenues in Coney Island.

The whole controversy controversy being a thing we'll get into just in a bit here.

But what you should know right now is that both men have agreed to a duel,

a hot dog eat-off live on Netflix this Labor Day, one-on-one,

September 2nd,

which has had the effect of reviving another, even older form of controversy.

about whether major league eaters

are even athletes at all.

And so what I wanted to do here as the host of a technically sports show is begin by finding out how Joey Chestnut, who's now 40 years old and now weighing in at a jarringly normal 230 pounds, made this his full-time job in the first place.

When I fell in love with it, I did the first contest.

And I didn't even want to do the first contest.

I was shy about eating in front of people.

I was trying to to get an engineering degree and it was never my goal to be in the public eye.

One of the guys we'll be watching is Joey Chestnut.

So when I started, I was like a deer in headlights.

What was scary about it to you back then?

Well, my whole life, like

you're taught to kind of hold back, you got to eat with manners.

I remember growing up, I'd almost get in trouble for eating too quick or being the first one to finish.

When I was in college, I'd like, all right, don't make a fool of myself.

Don't be the first one to finish and get seconds.

I self-conscious of it.

It was weird.

Like the first contest, it was like,

I loved it.

I didn't have to hold back.

My little brother signed me up my first contest when I was 21.

And it just kind of snowballed.

I was like, oh my God,

they're paying me to eat.

I didn't even win the first contest, the lobster eating contest.

I tired for third, and I was like, oh, I knew I loved it.

And two weeks later, there was an asparagus contest,

and I put some thought into it, and I got the win.

I was a weekend warrior.

I continued school and I started working construction management and I'd leave work early on Fridays, eat on Saturday, go back home on Sunday, and then back to a normal day job.

And eventually eating just, it grew to a point where

I was able to make it my jobby job.

Can you name off the top of your head all of the foods you have competitively eaten?

There's a world chili eating contest.

Two and a quarter gallons of chili.

Jesus Christ.

There's bagel, bagel mania.

They're actually really big bagels.

I only think I did 11 or 12 of those bagels in eight minutes.

There's hot dogs.

They're waiting to see if he finishes it off and does it again.

Looking to become a four-time 70-dog consumer.

Nobody has done it better.

Nobody has done it with greater consumption.

Nobody's stomach has lasted as long as Joey's.

It's a dirty dozen for Chestnut.

Number 12 at Nathan's.

Katz's deli.

I think it was an eight-minute contest and I did, I want to say equivalent to like 14 of their whole sandwiches which are all their amazing sandwiches

oh so wait so this is okay so immediately though i'm wondering like how often are you doing a competitive eating contest and thinking to yourself this

tastes good oh that's the best it's so much better like i i naturally love hot dogs i love an all-beef hot dog the hardest part for me than that contest is having to dunk the bun in water oh it's so hard And a chili, good chili is good.

Like some years with the chili contest, they, there was like kind of a weird chili where they put cinnamon in it.

And that was, that would never agreed with me.

And I was never breaking a record on those years.

But when it's good chili, I definitely dominate.

Good food is always easier to eat.

I hear that people like, people are like, oh, do you even taste the food?

And I was like, of course I taste it.

If they're, if like a race car driver in a bad road, if the road is bad, everything they're,

they're going to hit a bump and it's going to be even worse.

And like if there's a bad taste, I'm going to be hitting it again and again.

And it's going to, it's going to irritate me.

Okay.

So as the engineer, and you is sort of assessing why you are so

good at all of this.

How much of it do you think is psychological, mental versus some physical gift that you can't quite explain?

How do you sort of see that pie chart?

Yeah,

there's definitely a little bit of a physical gift.

I've always been a big eater i i'm really good at solving problems and i i'm competitive and i've gotten a lot better over the over the years i've run into competitive eaters who have amazing absolutely amazing raw and natural talent but competitive eating is a smaller thing there's no books written about it there's no trainers who can give you a wealth of knowledge And I give people hints every now and then of how to, how to push themselves and just find that right rhythm.

You have to be able to control all your breathing through your nose, little breaths.

And

also, like block breathing is just because you exhale doesn't mean you have to inhale right away.

You can exhale, and then your lungs are empty.

So then it's easier to swallow what's in your mouth.

And then you sneak in a breath through your nose, and you find that rhythm of the swallows and bites in between these breaths.

And you can keep this amazing rhythm up for quite a while.

Same way as runners.

Runners count their breaths in between their steps it's silly just to just eat eat eat eat until you run out of breath and then breathe i remember watching a youtube video about uh i don't know if you've seen them but like throat singers people who are like using their breathing and also like alternating the ability to make sounds with their like throat muscles while also doing like this very strange circular breathing technique

I'm realizing that like, I think you might just have been on your own parallel path to that, except instead of like music and song, it's crystal hamburgers.

Yeah, now I used to play a trumpet and circular breathing.

You could use almost use your throat.

You could use your throat to hold break, hold, hold a little bit of air, and then use your throat to push it out while breathing in through your nose.

I had to perfect everything.

Swallowing, going from empty to full.

I'm almost embarrassed how much thought I put into eating.

The strategy, the methodology, the training for all of of this you mentioned full and empty and just the way that you sort of strategize can you explain that in a sort of like competitive eating 101 way to me like what do you mean by full and empty and all that stuff empty means that not only is there no food in my stomach but there's like no food in my whole digestive tract i've doing done a cleanse for about a day and a half and i've been sucking in my stomach and i'm like oh yeah things are going to settle deep

and it's easier when you're absolutely empty it's It's weird.

Like these do these muscles do get tired.

Your throat muscles.

The muscles in your throat and esophagus, the peristalsis muscles that move the food from your mouth to your stomach, when they're slow, like that year, 2006,

there's nothing you can do about it.

Even if you have the tolerance, you have the capacity.

If these muscles are just not working for you, you're just you're out of luck.

So it takes a long time to figure out how to train those muscles to be able to move 15, 16, 17 pounds of food in eight or 10 minutes.

Whereas like a normal meal is about a pound and a half, two pounds with water and people eat that over 30 minutes.

During the contest, I have to change the way I'm eating because certain muscles get tired.

And I can't eat the same way I did in minute one, like minute eight.

I'm not eating the same way as I did in minute one.

So I have to practice when I'm changing certain things, when I'm

taking smaller smaller bites, when I'm swallowing a little bit less, when I'm leaning on the water a little bit, taking a little bit more water in,

I've been really lucky that I love it.

It's only like solving a problem and I can enjoy pushing it.

How do you learn all of the things you just described?

Is that trial and error?

Is that just like testing?

Writing it down.

Yeah, and for a long, long time, I kept a food journal.

And I'll still, when I start training, I start writing down my whole daily routine and my weight, how I'm feeling,

what I'm eating, and the jaw and throat exercises I'm doing.

Sometimes I try things and they don't help.

And sometimes they help.

So

there are different exercises over the years I've learned that help quite a bit.

And

I'm a believer in practice.

I don't leave it up to chance.

I break records in practice.

I enjoy every bit of it, everything from the fasting, the cleanse beforehand, to the actual practice, to the being bloated afterwards and feeling like,

I don't know, I wouldn't say,

I don't know.

I enjoy it.

I enjoy

being gross and disgusting afterwards.

Yeah, what are you putting in your body during like normal times between contests?

What are you eating?

Yeah, as soon as I can eat after practice,

it's super high fiber.

as lettuce, cucumber, lemon dressing.

It's pretty,

I'll change, but it's very, very low carb, no sugar.

And then I'll introduce protein.

I can do a practice about every six or seven days, maybe five if I lose the weight, if things are moving great.

Some days I don't have a normal day of eating at all.

But it, so then I just go back into cleanse mode.

Cleansing mode, it's just lemon juice water and a little bit of protein supplement.

But I do crazy detoxes

and where I do

coffee enemas and weird shit, like

to make sure that my body is getting rid of things.

I put a lot of stuff in my body.

So

I put in some work to make sure that I'm getting getting rid of it.

And then you'll hear doctors say that, oh, those things don't do anything.

I was like, well, I've seen things come out.

Clearly, clearly weren't coming out on their own.

And

so I think you have to be willing to think outside the box a little bit.

So I'm just going to jump in here to officially posit something,

which is that no normal person should be willing to think outside the box like Joey Chestnut does.

I mean, look, if it wasn't clear already, great competitive eaters strategically adopt what amounts to an inadvisable cycle of extreme eating disorders.

And even beyond all of the throat muscle workouts and the hours upon hours upon hours of deeply methodical practice, this degree of self-endangerment actually speaks directly to the debate that I mentioned at the outset of this episode.

Because you may refuse to view competitive eating as a sport and you are by no means alone.

But Joey Chestnut made a very intentional choice

to go the other way.

In order to put that much time into it, I had to consider a sport, not a hobby, not just

something that I was having fun with.

In order to put that much time into it, I had to consider the sport.

And when I did,

it paid off.

And

just like a football player, they go into a game.

They're going and knowing they're going to get hurt.

They're going to finish that game and be in pain.

A major league baseball player, they know their arm is going to be sore after the game.

They go in knowing there's going to be pain.

A lot of people go into these eating contests thinking they're going to eat.

It'll be fun.

Like, no, no, I go in knowing I'm going to be uncomfortable.

I'm going to be bloated.

I'm going to be paying for it for days.

I had to look at it like other athletes.

Once you go in knowing it's going to be uncomfortable, you can push yourself a little bit harder.

What won't you eat at this point?

What things are you like?

I'm not doing that.

That's too gross for me.

If they do it in a weird way, like I'll eat, I'll eat

just recently, somebody wanted me to do a spam eating contest.

It was like, how are you serving spam?

Like, they just wanted to see like canned, like, gel gelatinous spam.

It's wet, wet spam.

Yeah.

If they try to make it a gross contest,

that's not fun.

Like,

I did a brain taco eating contest and

they the way they cooked them up they didn't taste that bad i but i mean they looked like brains so it was a little bit rough the most disgusting thing you you regret having competed in food-wise is what so i love ribs i did this this uh rib eating contest The ribs were dry.

I couldn't tell it was bone and meat.

And it tasted like an ashtray.

So that goes, I hate to be picky, but yeah, when they do it, when there's a food I naturally love, I hold the record for ribs,

like 13 pounds of meat.

Right.

Help me, help you is what you're thinking to yourself.

I love to eat and I love to push myself, but why would you give us garbage food?

I didn't realize I hate to be picky would be a thing that you would say when talking about your

eating strategy, but it makes sense.

It makes sense that you would have standards.

How dare I suppose that you're just down to just prove that you can do any of this, no matter how it tastes?

And just a little bit of thought.

People,

you watch the Olympics, their conditions.

Conditions have

affect everything.

And the food is a condition that if it's good food, those are good conditions.

How often are you done with the contest and you physically feel unwell?

These days, I'm well, like my body's rejecting the food

there's something wrong when was the last time i was physically unwell it was a smaller contest where it was hot as heck outside but it was about three years ago what was the food

it was uh mutton sliders or mutton sandwiches

and i didn't even break the record it happens and and you try to figure out what it is like whether it was the heat the water, tolerance for the food.

But these days with hot dogs and any major food,

I have enough of a tolerance and

I'm so regimented with making sure that I'm hydrated enough that it's not even a risk anymore.

I need to be able to push harder.

So, speaking of pushing, Joey Chestnut,

tell me about your poop.

Oh, my God.

Which ones?

What comes to mind?

50 shades of brown, brother.

50 shades of brown.

if you're looking to add something special to your next celebration try remy martin 1738 accord royale this smooth flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends remy martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Feen Champion, African Alcohol by Volume 40 by Remy Control, USA Incorporated, York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

So the day after, is it the day after?

Is it the night after the contest?

How long does it take?

You're smiling and laughing already at my naivete as to how this all works inside of you oh my god we're gonna get we're gonna get censored for this no this is this is a free speech platform sometimes

the first urge i'm like oh my god i pushed one out

it's coming now

i wasn't as empty as i thought i was

and

i'm standing up and it usually like the greasier the food is the more that that grease is running through you

i'm drinking warm water during the during the event and it's uh and that's to help things keep moving about five hours later that's a contest food is working and it's uh it's going to come in waves and you know your body

and that's that's part of the whole not wouldn't say trick but being absolutely empty makes it easier to move and then also

Your body can only absorb so many calories.

It's

without getting graphic.

And slowly things settle down and it's more and more normal.

I like how you attempted to be discreet by saying, without being graphic, I'm here to be graphic.

Is your post-contest life just hanging around the toilet?

Like when do you regain the ability to move freely around the cabin, as it were?

It's about eight hours later.

I'm starting to feel better.

And when I say feeling better, I'm still bloated, I'm still lethargic.

I'm still going to get a look in the eye of like, oh, I got to run.

There's about four hours after, then the four hours after that.

You know, every athlete, when you're pushing into the limit, there's a little ugliness.

If you see the marathon runners after the marathon, they look like they're dead.

And

my mind, mine afterwards is a little bit

rough as well.

Do you ever just like look down at the bowl and feel impressed with what you've just done?

Pablo, there have been times where I feel so good afterwards.

I'm like, wow.

Feels too damn good.

I'm going to leave it at that.

I do want to just follow up, though, on the first thing you said, which is, I believe you said that sometimes you're mid-contest and you realize I have just pooped while standing up.

No, no, no, I didn't say that.

Did I?

I sounded like you did.

I said at the end of the contest that the first feeling I have is to take.

It's uh,

there's nothing wrong with that.

No, no, hold, hold up.

There is nothing wrong with any of this.

This is a judgment-free zone.

I merely want to inquire whether, when you are getting the mustard yellow belt placed atop your body, you simultaneously are thinking, I need to take a

right now.

I mean, we're adults.

Just because we can take a s doesn't mean you have to take a s.

Just because you are tired doesn't mean you need to take a nap.

You know what I mean?

I go back to runners a lot.

You think their body's telling them to keep running?

No, their body's telling them to stop.

They're in control of their body.

They're making it run.

We're talking little, little things in the body.

I just got to ignore certain feelings.

You had, I don't know if you still have a roommate.

No, no, I have three dogs now and a fiancé.

Okay, fantastic.

Not really a roommate.

Well, technically, technically, the most intimate of roommates.

How would you say it's like to be your

roommate?

Whether it was back in the day or now with your fiancé.

What's it like to be around you in the aftermath?

I feel bad for them i feel bad for them i must have some redeeming qualities because they put up with a lot

what's the worst part of being

cohabitating with joey chestnut after he has just won yet another title we've talked about a little bit of the big one but uh yeah everything like when i'm on a crazy diet

I don't, I don't have to keep any bread in the house and no sugars.

I can't have it in the house.

Otherwise, I'll eat it.

You know, the thing that was most shocking to me when I first saw you and Kobayashi, Takaro Kobayashi, of course, on that stage in 06, surfing still well, Nathan's hot dog eating contest, Coney Island.

It was that you guys looked, just in terms of stature, like fairly normal, if not fit

people.

And the sport trends that way.

When did it get that way?

Are you, who's responsible for that?

Like, it's just one of the more surprising things if you've never seen competitive eating before that guys look like you and Kobayashi, and which is to say, you have like muscles, you're working out, you're like, yeah, Kobayashi is ripped right now.

Dude, he's the one who

made it like, oh, it's not just the 400-pound guys.

It's not the 500-pound guys.

You have to be able to push yourself.

You have to be healthy.

I mean,

I've never been super healthy.

I love to eat too much.

I'm fit enough to push myself to kneading,

not too much else.

But over the last decade, you'll look at a lot of the top guys, they're former bodybuilders, they're CrossFit guys.

Jeff Esper used to be a power lifter.

They enjoy pushing themselves, they enjoy making their body work for them.

This year at Nathan's, I wasn't there, but I think

there were three guys who did over 50 hot dogs.

And so now we arrive at the point where we should probably explain why Joey Chestnut, of all people, was not at Nathan's last month, despite being the reigning champion and despite having 16 mustard yellow belts to his name.

And the reason is because Joey Chestnut was exiled.

Allegedly exiled by Nathan's and Major League Eating and its chairman slash master of ceremonies, George Shea,

all because Joey Chestnut had done the unthinkable.

He had signed an endorsement deal with the brand Impossible Foods,

a maker of vegan hot dogs.

Last night on X, Chestnut said he was gutted to learn that after 19 years, he has been banned from the contest.

To set the record straight, I do not have a contract with Major League Eating or Nathan's, and they are looking to change the rules from past years as it relates to other partners I can work with, he wrote.

All of which left Joey with this terrible mutton sandwich level taste in his mouth.

And so, neither he nor his archrival, Takeru Kobayashi, was in attendance at this event that they, more than anybody else, ever

made famous.

Kobayashi, by the way, has had his own famously fractured business relationship with Major League Eating.

Earlier this year, in fact, Kobayashi had announced his retirement from the sport due to what he called health concerns.

But as for the whereabouts of Joey Chestnut on July 4th, 2024, it is safe to say that he had a different set of concerns.

I didn't watch it.

I was in Texas getting ready for a contest against some soldiers.

So they were there for the four soldiers versus me.

That is 16-time champion of the nation's famous hot dog eating contest, Joey Chestnut.

But he was at Fort Bliss in El Paso for this event last night.

Joey, the Jaws chestnut, was doing what he does best, and that is eating hot dogs.

He downed a whopping 57, 57 in just five and a half minutes.

That's like half of the time that he normally does it with the Nathans eating contest.

And get this, he beat out a team of four soldiers, a team of them who could only stomach a combined total of 49 hot dogs themselves.

You defeated America's military, their combined might,

eating, demolishing them, eating hot dogs.

But the feeling

of

not being there must have been strange.

I I look at it as a loss almost.

Than what I lost in 2015.

I came back, I annihilated everybody.

I broke records.

And that's what that's the way I'm looking at it at this contest with Kobayashi.

I'm just super angry that I couldn't go.

And

I'm going to take it out on this contest.

the emotion that you have in talking about this is unsurprising to me given that i saw you 18 years ago crying after that first loss

and now

when i sort of get a sense of how deeply you care about this.

I just wonder how this has sort of shaped your relationship with Kobayashi because it's been almost 20 years of rivalry.

And I imagine the relationship has sort of evolved over time.

Where is it now?

We're not as friendly as you'd expect.

Tell me more.

There's a language barrier.

He holds a grudge.

I hold a grudge.

There's no real communication as social media.

He's blocked me.

And

when did Takaro Kobayashi block you?

Oh, years ago.

Years ago.

What did you do?

I was probably saying not nice things, but

I was gunning and competitive, but he blocked me.

I think it's good.

If he was my friend, I probably wouldn't be pushing myself as hard.

You know, I'm thinking back to,

I guess this was 2010 now.

And just one of the things you may have said to Kobayashi or about Kobayashi that may have bothered Kobayashi, it was when he did not appear in the contest.

And you're smiling already.

You maybe remember this quote: if he were a man, he'd be here now,

end quote.

And the reason, of course, Joey, as you continue to grin, is that the reason he wasn't there was because he was banned by the contest, by George Shea, by Major League Eating, because he refused to sign this exclusivity deal.

And now,

who would have thunk it?

You and him 14 years later, you kind of have seen exactly what he was going through.

I probably shouldn't have questioned his masculinity or manhood.

I was young.

I went back and watched the video.

Yo, that was crazy, though.

It was insane.

So for people who don't remember, can you remind people, Joey, what happened with him in the crowd and then what happened from there?

After the contest, the year, so the year he didn't compete.

2010.

Yeah, 2010.

He tries to get on stage.

They're like, no, you can't get on stage.

And like the cops are like, say, no, get off stage.

He's like holding on.

He has this crazy look in his eye.

He goes like, oh, shit.

I thought the cops were going to tase him or something.

And they ended up arresting him.

He got arrested.

He was charged with like a multitude of things because he refused to loosen his grip on like the fence.

It was one of the most surreal things I've ever seen.

He had the crazy eye, though.

And I respect that.

I get the crazy eye.

I didn't realize that both of you were this crazy.

Oh, dude, did you see it when that protester came on the stage?

Oh, I had the crazy eye when I grabbed him by the neck.

Chestnut briefly choked an animal rights protester who got up on stage during the contest and shoved him while he was in the middle of downing hot dogs.

Seconds later, chestnut resumes like nothing even happened.

Then I was like, then I got to go back to eating.

The craziest part was that you were like mid-chew, like you were still like

eating.

I still had hot dogs in my left hand.

Now I don't like being aggressive.

I felt bad about that.

But the crazy eye took over.

I just had to keep going.

George Shea in all of this, you know, I remember marveling at his introductions of you guys.

It's the voice that you hear at the top of every Nathan's contest.

And I just wonder,

all these years later, now, having gone through all of this, how do you feel about that guy at this point?

He does an amazing job on the microphone.

His goal

when he's on that stage is to convince everybody watching that they're watching something amazing.

Look on his works, ye mighty and despair.

He has surpassed the kings of Egypt.

There is nothing in this earth that is not now a monument to this man with 71 hot dogs and buns, 12 victories in Coney Island, the champion of the world, Joey Chetna!

Yeah, I have nothing but respect for the way he announces contests.

That's a very specific scouting report, of course, because he does not simply announce contests.

He seems to also be a very prominent hand in the business of Major League Eating.

No,

I don't know.

I mean, his name's on a lot of things, but there's other people involved.

I really don't think he's a bad guy.

Contract issues sometimes.

There's probably ways I could have done things different and he could have done things different or other or Nathan's or other

parties, but I don't, he's not evil by any means.

But

he's a businessman.

There are few signs more

convincing that competitive eating has become a real sport than the fact that you have all of these business now,

stalemates, stare downs, conflicts.

Like that is the sign that this is real business now, Joey.

And it feels like you starting to think with Netflix as an alternate business opportunity.

It all feels like the product of what you've been working really hard for.

I wonder if it feels that way to you.

I don't.

It was never a goal.

And the the way I look at it is like, I got on this weird wave.

And

I loved it.

I mean, it's been a fun, fun ride.

And I didn't know where it was going to take me.

And I know the wave got bigger.

And sometimes it got smaller, but I've been on this crazy wave.

And I've been really, really lucky.

The whole thing is nuts.

But before we let Joey Chestnut go here, there was yet another impossible controversy, you might say, that I needed to find out about.

This is a controversy that I believe Joey Chestnut is singularly qualified to fact-check.

Because while substitute hosting the Dan Lebatard show last month, i had the occasion to wonder aloud about a very prominent scientific theory is it actually possible to drink a gallon of milk in an hour without vomiting no

it's impossible

and the guy who very immediately said no there

with a noticeable degree of pretty personal conviction happens to be a former Florida Marlins bat boy named Nick Cirrillo.

And what you should know about Nick Cirrillo is that in 2005,

Nick Cirrillo was fired by former Marlins president and noted friend of PTFO, David Sampson, all because former Marlins pitcher Brad Penny bet Nick Cirrillo $500

that the bad boy could not drink a gallon of milk in an hour without throwing up.

So the kitchen was tiny.

It couldn't have been any more than like a 10 by 10 little room.

And I was sitting on the counter and I had to sit there the whole time.

That was part of the deal.

I couldn't move or do anything or go to the bathroom.

I sat in the corner by the coffee machine and drank milk for

an hour.

As Brad Penny himself also exclusively confirmed.

I can't even explain to you how hard you threw up.

Please try.

And so what I wanted to do was ask the greatest competitive eater of all time whether former Marlins bat boy Nick Cirrillo was, in fact, correct in his estimation that winning that bet

is impossible.

I can do it.

I can do it in like 11 seconds.

I could probably do two gallons.

One gallon, you could digest it pretty easily for me at least, because my stomach is big enough and holds on to it and can produce enough of the acid to digest it.

But a lot of people,

they got those little baby stomachs.

We had a person we interviewed here who was a bad boy for the Florida Marlins, as they were known back then.

57 minutes-ish, and I threw up all over the place.

He was fired because he barfed all over the Marlins Clubhouse, just pure white and like just super,

super strong vomit stream.

Projectile, I believe is the term.

So I don't know if your advice to him is gonna is gonna sort of make him feel any better.

He's uh

you gotta stay calm.

You gotta have your body saying things, you gotta be like, no, no, no, you can do it.

No negative energy.

The biggest thing is stay calm.

He did not stay calm.

Truly the last question, and I'll get out of your life.

The happiest you've ever been is

oh my gosh, the happiest I've ever been.

Probably my first date with my fiancé.

Did she know what she was in for on that first date?

She didn't know what she was in for.

No, not at all.

It's like the first contest.

My love at first bite.

The first time I did that, the lobster contest, like, oh my God, I love this.

I was made for this.

And then

I'm with Bregan

first day, you're like, oh, my God,

we're connecting.

Hey, we're fitting together.

I was made for this.

And

those days stand out.

There aren't

too many times in your life where you feel like you're made for something or somebody.

I believe that that is the most romantic comparison to a lobster eating contest in human history.

Yeah.

Joey Chestnut, thank you for letting me inside of your

house,

your intestines, and also

your heart.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great to talk to you again.

Likewise, man.

Pablo Tori Finds Out is produced by Michael Antonucci, Walter Averoma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Rachel Miller-Howard, Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tumanello, and Juliet Warren.

CEO Engineering by RG Systems, sound design by NGW Post, our theme song by John Bravo.

All of us will see you on Tuesday.