So Friday saw the biggest competitive eating event since July 4th, when Joey Chestnut sent defending champion Matt Stonie home DEVASTATED by 70-52 in hot dogs with buns to win his record 9th career Nathan's belt.
Las Vegas (July 29th) saw the legendary Takeru Kobayashi against the unstoppable Molly Schuyler, who finished not one, not two, but THREE Big Texas 72oz challenges in 20 minutes, and busted Joey Chestnut's record in the same.
The eating discipline was tacos, which Kobayashi had won 5 years running, including a WORLD RECORD 144 last year. However, famously he only won in 2014 due to "debris deduction" subtracting Pat Bertoletti down, turning a 140-141 loss into a 130-122 so-called victory.
Would it be different this time? You can watch the video here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB5lhA0oYMU
Kobayashi is rght of center (fuchsia hair), and Molly to the right of him (with the sunglasses and undercut hair), and at the 9:00 video mark you can see that her toteboard just hit 150, and half a minute later she hits 160. Then she stalls in the last minute, and Kobayashi hits only 150 with about 0:45 on the clock, and maybe both of them eat after the bell, but Kobayashi is more blatant.
But then watch the end of the video. It shows them "weighing" the debris. And coming up with the "political" result, that Kobayashi wins AGAIN, by 137-134 "adjusted" tacos. What kind of result is that??
Do you think this is an artificial glass-ceiling against female competitive eaters, holding them to a higher standard of neatness? Sonya Thomas ("The Black Widow") was untouchable for almost a decade on the distaff side, but now Miki Sudo is dominant among women, even besting Joey Chestnut at RibFest (2013) and last year's Turkey showdown (Thanksgiving). So what gives?