Joey Chestnut sets hot dog-eating record in Netflix showdown with Takeru Kobayashi

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Once and for all, we know for sure the top dog when it comes to eating hot dogs.

Competitive eating legend Joey Chestnut defeated long-time rival Takeru Kobayashi in a one-on-one hot dog eating contest broadcast live on Netflix from Hyper X Arena in Las Vegas.

And it wasn’t even close.

Chestnut consumed a world-record 83 hot dogs and buns during the 10-minute contest compared to Kobayashi’s 66.

The American bested the previous record of 76, which he set at the Nathan’s Fourth of July contest in 2022.

“This is amazing,” Chestnut said afterward. “I’ve been trying to hit 80 hot dogs for years. Without Kobayashi, I was never able to do it. He drives me. We weren’t always nice to each other, but I love the way we push each other to be our best.”

The showdown between the two iconic eaters was 15 years in the making, with the pair most recently squaring off at the Nathan’s contest in 2009 – an event that went down to a five-dog sudden death round.

While the two rivals became famous through the annual contest on Coney Island, both had falling outs with event organizer Major League Eating.

Kobayashi was banned in 2010 after a contract dispute while Chestnut came to an impasse with the organization earlier this year after signing an endorsement deal with Impossible Foods.

Kobayashi won the contest six consecutive times from 2001 to 2006 before Chestnut burst onto the scene, winning 16 of the next 17 Mustard Belts – his lone loss came in 2015, when Chestnut ate 60 dogs to winner Matt Stonie’s 62.

With Chestnut out of this year’s contest, Patrick Bertoletti won with a total of 58 hot dogs and buns.

The Chestnut-Kobayashi showdown, titled Unfinished Beef, also featured a change in rules from the traditional Nathan’s contest.

The pair were not allowed to separate the hot dog from the bun or dip either in water.

While Chestnut admitted that the change worried him at first, it ultimately didn’t slow him down.

“When I first heard the rules about no dunking, I was really worried,” Chestnut said. “But then I learned how to eat them like this. Any other hot dog eating contest I do, I’m gonna be eating some of them without dunking. This was amazing.”

The big Chestnut-Kobayashi faceoff wasn’t the only excitement on the card, either.

Stonie smoked a team of three former Olympians — Ryan Locate, Ryan Murphy and Max Irving — by eating 53 chicken wings to their combined 36 in just three minutes.

Also, Leah Shutkever picked up her 35th Guinness World Record by eating an astounding 2,000.56 grams of watermelon in 2:30, beating the previous mark of 1,750 grams, which was done in three minutes.

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