With Joey Chestnut absent, it’s anybody’s game.
The 16-time champion won’t be partaking within the 2024 Nathan’s hot dog eating contest, leaving room for a latest winner.
“It’s gonna come all the way down to the last one or two hotdogs” Pablo Martinez, a former competitive eater who currently holds the No. 21 spot, said in an interview with The Post.
Chestnut, 40, stays the present record-holder with 76 hotdogs in 2021 and nobody has come near surpassing him.
He has won the competition 16 of the last 17 years and the last eight straight.
Another person shall be walking away the winner for the primary time since 2015 with Matt Stonie upset Chestnut
Australian James Webb — the No.1 ranked eater in Australia and No. 5 eater on this planet — is a transparent frontrunner and fan favorite, in line with contest host George Shea, who also said things can be “neck and neck” without Chestnut.
Webb, who weighed in at 213 kilos at Wednesday’s weigh-in, has won six out of 10 Major League Eating events within the last six months and even beat Chestnut in a pistachio eating contest in California earlier this yr (fellow contestant Nick Wehry also beat Chestnut in that competition).
“I would like to be the primary Australian to ever eat 50-plus at Coney Island,” Webb told The Post before the weigh-in, adding that he has spent the last yr attempting to “earn my stripes” before the competition.
Though Webb set a private record of 47 hot dogs in Coney Island last yr, he fell far wanting outdoing Chestnut’s 62.
“I don’t think anyone will ever break his [Chestnut’s] record, it’s unfathomable to think that,” Martinez said.
Webb will compete against 4 other male contestants ranked because the world’s top 50 eaters by MLE: Ricardo Corbucci of Brazil; Patrick Bertoletti of Illinois; Nick Wehry of Florida; and Geoffrey Esper of Massachusetts.
Because the five men attempt 50-plus hot dogs in only 10 minutes — removed from 76 — Chestnut shall be competing against soldiers in Fort Bliss, Texas on Independence Day.
“Three weeks ago, they weren’t going to win. Now they’re going to win,” Shea said Wednesday.
The 2024 Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest starts at 10:45 a.m. Eastern on ESPN with the ladies’s competition.
The boys’s competition will follow at noon ET.
With Joey Chestnut absent, it’s anybody’s game.
The 16-time champion won’t be partaking within the 2024 Nathan’s hot dog eating contest, leaving room for a latest winner.
“It’s gonna come all the way down to the last one or two hotdogs” Pablo Martinez, a former competitive eater who currently holds the No. 21 spot, said in an interview with The Post.
Chestnut, 40, stays the present record-holder with 76 hotdogs in 2021 and nobody has come near surpassing him.
He has won the competition 16 of the last 17 years and the last eight straight.
Another person shall be walking away the winner for the primary time since 2015 with Matt Stonie upset Chestnut
Australian James Webb — the No.1 ranked eater in Australia and No. 5 eater on this planet — is a transparent frontrunner and fan favorite, in line with contest host George Shea, who also said things can be “neck and neck” without Chestnut.
Webb, who weighed in at 213 kilos at Wednesday’s weigh-in, has won six out of 10 Major League Eating events within the last six months and even beat Chestnut in a pistachio eating contest in California earlier this yr (fellow contestant Nick Wehry also beat Chestnut in that competition).
“I would like to be the primary Australian to ever eat 50-plus at Coney Island,” Webb told The Post before the weigh-in, adding that he has spent the last yr attempting to “earn my stripes” before the competition.
Though Webb set a private record of 47 hot dogs in Coney Island last yr, he fell far wanting outdoing Chestnut’s 62.
“I don’t think anyone will ever break his [Chestnut’s] record, it’s unfathomable to think that,” Martinez said.
Webb will compete against 4 other male contestants ranked because the world’s top 50 eaters by MLE: Ricardo Corbucci of Brazil; Patrick Bertoletti of Illinois; Nick Wehry of Florida; and Geoffrey Esper of Massachusetts.
Because the five men attempt 50-plus hot dogs in only 10 minutes — removed from 76 — Chestnut shall be competing against soldiers in Fort Bliss, Texas on Independence Day.
“Three weeks ago, they weren’t going to win. Now they’re going to win,” Shea said Wednesday.
The 2024 Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest starts at 10:45 a.m. Eastern on ESPN with the ladies’s competition.
The boys’s competition will follow at noon ET.
