Is Joey Chestnut the Dominant Competitor of Our Time?

Joey Chestnut stands alone when it comes to competitive eating. He set the current world record by consuming 76 hot dogs and buns (in 10 minutes!) in the 2021 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, and he beat that mark with 83 in a Netflix special event last year.

This July 4, the 41-year-old reclaimed his title by eating 70.5 hot dogs after missing last year's event because of a sponsorship dispute.

No one in the field can touch his 17 total world championships. That means we need to look outside the competitive eating realm for worthy challengers.

One way to do that: Take a bottom-line approach, and just count championships.

LeBron James can lament it all he wants, but Ringz Culture is going nowhere. And by that metric, the one that fixates on ultimate success over everything else, nobody in any sport is on Chestnut’s level.

The gap only widens when you consider the finer points of dominance and the various other ways Chestnut separates himself from his purported equals. Let’s stack him up against world-renowned GOATs to see if anyone has a case.

Michael Jordan

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Michael Jordan was recognized as the most dominant individual player five times via MVP awards. His team won six championships. Maybe he deserved a couple more of the former and would have won another two of the latter if he hadn’t taken a mid-career hiatus. But those are the numbers we’re working with.

Even if you doubled them, MJ would still fall short of Chestnut and the 17 titles he holds in his signature event. If Bill Russell is your NBA GOAT because of his 11 rings, bad news: Chestnut has him beaten handily, too. Russell was also famous for throwing up before big games due to nerves. And while we’re on the subject of gut-related frailty, Jordan is held up as some kind of mythical hero for playing a postseason game after some bad pizza gave him food poisoning.

Our guy Joey wakes up on the morning of competitions hoping he suffers gastrointestinal distress. He thrives on bubble guts. In fact, stomach discomfort is his goal. If he feels like he’s about to lose his lunch, it’s a sign of a job well done.

That’s a different level of dominance. Other GOATs have to overcome tummy troubles. Chestnut invites them. Cue the Bane meme where he tells Batman “you merely adopted the dark; I was born in it.”

Babe Ruth

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Babe Ruth only won seven World Series. That’s more championships than Jordan, but it’s still less than half of Chestnut’s total.

The Great Bambino also amassed that relatively modest level of success in a watered-down league that didn’t allow Black players to participate. Chestnut, in contrast, has been eating the international best of the best under the table this whole time.

Ruth never had to prove himself against Oscar Charleston or Josh Gibson. He never took an at-bat against Satchel Paige. Meanwhile, Chestnut’s pathway to the top of the competitive eating game essentially began when he took down six-time world champion Takeru Kobayashi in 2007, a hot-dog inhaler so renowned that he was already recognized on a single-name basis.

In what was described at the time as “a record-setting yet repulsive” triumph, Chestnut’s 2007 victory came in an inclusive environment that welcomed competitors of all ages and genders and international origins. If anything, Japanese eaters had quite the stranglehold on the event until Chestnut very American-ly proved he could eat more excessively than the representatives of any other country. 

The only barrier to entry was a willingness to gorge oneself for the sake of competition.

Also, Ruth only hit 714 home runs in 22 seasons. Chestnut has consumed 1,214 hot dogs in 19 official Nathan’s competitions so far. This one isn’t even close.

Tom Brady

AP Photo/Dave Martin

Broken-record alert: Tom Brady’s seven Super Bowls don’t measure up to Chestnut’s 17 contest wins. And while Brady can’t be downgraded for stomach frailty like Jordan or watered-down competition like Ruth, we have to acknowledge his failure to match Chestnut’s versatility.

Jordan played professional baseball for two years. Ruth was also a pitcher early in his career. Those two had range. Brady? Single-position player. Football only. Super weak, right?

We’ve only hit Chestnut’s hot-dog-eating prowess to this point because we haven’t needed to delve into his other consumptive exploits. But now’s the time to grind Brady’s case into the dust by citing Chestnut’s dominance across the entire eating world.

He holds 55 other world records. Fifty-five!

Chestnut has won competitions by eating 182 chicken wings in 30 minutes, 103 Krystal hamburgers in eight minutes, 121 Twinkies in six minutes and 141 hard-boiled eggs in eight minutes—just to name a few of his unbreakable marks.

Big Macs, chicken fingers, grilled cheese sandwiches, slices of pizza, glazed donuts, tacos. Chestnut dominates across the board.

That’d be like Brady having all of his great quarterbacking stats while also setting the all-time record in rushing yards one year, receiving yards the next and finishing it off with a never-before-seen number of solo tackles. All Brady ever did was throw the ball, leaving all the other aspects of his sport to teammates.

A lot of Brady’s New England Patriots teams had great defenses. Chestnut has to go it alone every time he straps on the feed bag. Imagine how much more successful he could be if he had hulking linebackers going around and smacking hot dogs out of his competitors' hands.

Tom Brady is a one-trick pony. If laws or morals permitted it, Chestnut could eat several actual ponies.

Anybody Else?

JEFF HAYNES / AFP

Tiger Woods has won 15 majors but participated in 95. That means he’s lost 80 times on the biggest stage. Chestnut is 17-for-20. No contest.

Secretariat is famous because he won three important races. Big whoop. Chestnut could definitely eat more oats than him if he wanted to.

Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have 13 Ballons d’Or between them. Combined, they’ve been recognized as the best in their sport fewer times than Chestnut. Pelé won only three World Cups. Boring!

Wayne Gretzky’s four Stanley Cups fall short. Muhammad Ali lost five times. Serena Williams’ 23 Grand Slam singles titles are compelling, but she’d need to dominate four or five other racket sports to compete with Chestnut’s non-hot-dog-related records.

Like so many tubes of processed meat, every challenger that comes into contact with Chestnut, the most dominant competitor in history, gets devoured.