Joey Chestnut's last-second hot dog showdown with Takeru Kobayashi needs a deep rewind

- [Narrator] It's the 4th of July, 2007. A lovely summer's day. No work, no school, and yet here you are inside watching the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island. More specifically, you're watching these men who are neck and hot dog-clogged neck in the final moments of a competition guaranteed to make history and you're not alone. There is a huge crowd here and over a million people tuned into ESPN watching people eat hot dogs. Let's ... we need to rewind. (engaging music) Okay, so before we get specific, I don't want to gloss over the general concept here. These folks are treating the thing we do to sustain our bodies like a sport. Whose idea was this? No one knows because that answer definitely lies in the distant past. (uptempo music) You can find performative and competitive eating in Greek and Roman mythology, like Heracles winning a contest to eat a whole bull. Norse mythology includes the god Loki losing a meat eating contest because he didn't finish the bones or the plate. This English guy from the 1600s used to win bets and draw spectators by eating, say, an entire sheep. This extremely ill French guy from the 1700s did a traveling act where he consumed animals alive. He was later accused of eating a toddler. The French were really MVPs of eating spectacles for a while there. In accounts of the 19th and early 20th centuries, you'll find competitive eating that more closely resembles what we see today. Revelers celebrating holidays, children at festivals, bored soldiers, they've all sat side by side to see who could eat the most, the fastest, and not just people by the way. In 1916, a Yankees player did a speed eating contest against an ostrich, and it didn't go well for the ostrich. But yeah, this format is old, and hot dogs, which are relatively uniform and easy to prepare in bulk, rank among the most popular challenge foods. It seems like every old American newspaper account of a German heritage festival includes a frankfurter eating contest. Our venue today, Coney Island in New York City, has been home to numerous legendary hot dog establishments and plenty of events like the above dating back to the early 20th century. But this Nathan's contest isn't that old. Nathan's Famous, the restaurant, has occupied this corner since 1916 and surely hosted its share of eating competitions. The records from those decades are vague, but around 1967, the supposed centennial of the advent of the hot dog, Nathan's began to host this more organized contest, albeit with a much higher time limit. It's happened almost every year since, often on a national holiday, usually with the champ downing a dozen to two dozen hot dogs. In the early 1990s, PR brothers named George and Richard Shea took over publicity for the Nathan's contest. The Sheas are very good at publicity. They concocted the mostly fictional lore that this exact contest has existed since 1916 and that its chintzy, bejeweled prize belt is some mysterious relic. They convinced papers to publish the contest's most compelling storylines each year, and George is the charismatic hat wearing carnival barker emceeing the spectacle today, as always. Beyond this contest, the Sheas pushed the idea of an organized professional eating circuit, pushed it basically into existence. Now under the auspices of an international federation, Major League Eating is a legit sports league. The Sheas made this all real, but they would agree that they got major help from abroad, a stroke of luck that's starting to feel like humiliation. For the better part of the last decade, this Independence Day celebrating stars and stripes draped all-American hot dog eating contest has been dominated by contestants from Japan. Before we meet the one in front of us, let's remember his predecessors. 20 years ago, Japan's Fuji television network sent a student TV personality and future pop star named Hiroaki Tominaga around the US with a film crew taking on challenges. He wrestled in Texas. He raced up the Empire State Building, and in February, 1986, he beat the prior year's hot dog contest winner, American Oscar Rodriguez, in a head-to-head eating showdown. Seven years later, Orie Ito, a Japanese student at Cal State Fullerton, repeated the challenge for TV Tokyo. She lost to the reigning Nathan's champion, Mike DeVito, but only by a couple dogs. These were the warning shots. See, Americans know Japanese TV from the cooking competition we imported, "Iron Chef", but Japanese television featured eating competitions just as exciting. Programs like "Food Battle Club" and "TV Champion" awarded big prizes to big eaters. In 1996, TV Tokyo once again sent their best. Hirofumi Nakajima had dazzled Japanese viewers by eating all of this. He showed up in Coney Island measuring much smaller than his opponent Ed Krachie and had supposedly never even tried a hot dog before. Nonetheless, Nakajima gobbled an unprecedented 23 1/4 wieners, strategically separating the buns from the dogs and using water as a lubricant to defeat Krachie in a head-to-head battle. In 1997, Nakajima returned, not for a novelty showdown, but for the actual official 4th of July contest. Nakajima won and second place went to another Japanese man, Kazutoyo Arai. It was happening. Except for 1999, which was muddied by cheating allegations, a Japanese competitor won every subsequent Nathan's contest. When Arai himself won in 2000, both his runners-up came from Japan. The takeover appeared complete, but it had only begun. I want you to imagine how it would feel if at the next Olympics someone were to show up and run a two-minute mile. This guy did that. (engaging music) Takeru Kobayashi was born in Nagano, Japan in 1978. He won enough eating contests at school to try out for the TV shows where he quickly demonstrated that he was world-class material. That got him a trip to Coney Island. On the morning of July 4th, 2001, the standing world record for hot dogs eaten in 12 minutes was 25 1/8 set by Arai. At day's end, the record was 50. A stunned Nathan's spokesman said Kobayashi had, with that performance alone, redefined the entire sport. Someone else might argue that Kobayashi defined it as a sport for the first time. The 23-year-old amazed everyone, not just with the number of hot dogs he ate, but the way he ate them. Reporter Gersh Kuntzman called it the Solomon Method, tearing the dogs and buns and stuffing his face with both hands, somehow swallowing the whole mouthful with scarcely any delay. He had practiced the necessary skills. He had trained the necessary muscles. He possessed natural gifts, a stomach and esophagus every bit as extraordinary as Michael Phelps's lungs. Takeru Kobayashi seemed like an athlete and he legitimized Major League Eating as a sport. And MLE became Kobayashi's best chance of capitalizing on his talent. Japan was no longer an option. In 2002, a 14-year-old student in Nagoya choked during a bread eating contest with his friends. They'd been emulating the TV competitions. The child went into a coma and died several months later. This tragedy, along with injuries during other competition programs, forced a reckoning. Among other changes, Japan put a hold on televised eating competitions. If Kobayashi envisioned a career in eating, he'd have to pursue it in the United States. (crowd cheers) - [Announcer] It's the "Glutton Bowl". - [Narrator] In 2002, Kobayashi took home $25,000 by winning the "Glutton Bowl" on Fox. They had refs in striped shirts and everything, and of course, they had George Shea touting his league's superstar. - [George Shea] He is the greatest athlete in the world. There is no question about that in my mind. - [Narrator] In '03, Fox put Kobayashi head-to-head against a Kodiak bear. - [Commentator] Now again, the contest begins as soon as the bear eats the first hot dog. - [Narrator] The bear ate more hot dogs, which was evidently a victory for the US, but I bet Kobayashi got paid more than the bear did. In '05, Kobayashi took home $10,000 after dominating a knockout-style US Open tournament of eating. Kobayashi dabbled in and won other single food events, but Nathan's is the big one and it's always been his focus and he has won it over and over and over again. Even on the occasions he didn't break his own world record, he put up numbers no one else had ever approached. The Shea Brothers' still young, still speculative organization had its first true superstar. By '03, that star power was enough to get the hot dog contest on ESPN. MasterCard made a whole commercial out of Kobayashi competing against another pro eater, Sonya Thomas. You know you've made it as a sport when athletes are selling shit. This is a nice setup for all involved. The star uses the sport to make a living. The sport uses the star to boost its profile. There is such a thing as too dominant though. Kobayashi needed a rival, lest fans get bored. Major League Eating hoped that rival might be an American. Well, here he is. Joey Chestnut would tell you that he grew up eating competitively since he was one of six children, the champion glutton of his household. After watching Kobayashi battle the bear in 2003, Chestnut wondered if he might be able to put his skill to work, make a little cash, or at least eat more while studying at San Jose State. In '05, Chestnut traveled to Reno for a lobster eating contest and placed. A couple weeks later, he did a deep fried asparagus contest closer to home and won it. Chestnut's rookie showing at the Nathan's contest that year was 32 hot hot dogs, enough for a distant third place to Kobayashi and enough that Joey believed he could beat the best with practice. Chestnut's schedule ever since has been obscene. Kobayashi is the sport's superstar, but he's never hit the circuit quite like Chestnut, who spent that first year between contests notching wins all over the nation and all over the dinner menu. Still, Kobayashi maintained his edge in events, like the Crystal Burger Contest, and even if he hadn't, Nathan's remains this sport's Super Bowl. To be the best, you gotta beat the best in Coney Island. Last year, not quite. Chestnut placed second, but he did become the first person to legitimately threaten the champ, consuming 52 hot dogs to Kobayashi's record-breaking 53 3/4. And guess what? That record no longer stands. After another whirlwind year of prize-winning, Chestnut showed up last month for a Nathan's qualifier in Arizona and ate 59 1/2 hot dogs in 12 minutes, obliterating Kobayashi's best ever performance. Clearly, even more clearly today, the man has been training. Kobayashi, meanwhile, hasn't been training. It's been a difficult year for the defending champ. The public hasn't seen much of him, but we've heard from him on his blog. Just a few months ago, Kobayashi lost his mother, who had been living with cancer for several years. He wrote openly about his mourning and about withdrawing from competitive eating, but ultimately decided to defend his hot dog crown, only to reveal just days ago, that his status was questionable because of jaw pain. After he had a wisdom tooth removed, Kobayashi was experiencing arthritis and could barely open his mouth. American media accused him of faking, of trying to fool Chestnut, a suggestion Kobayashi resented. The champ has had to suffer all kinds of heckling today. The playful pro-American sentiment from George Shea is one thing. Outright jingoism from the crowd is something else. Still, Kobayashi has pulled through. This number would represent the most hot dogs anyone's ever eaten, if not for Joey Chestnut's number. The American appears ahead as we approach 12 minutes, but appearances can deceive in this sport. Everything in your mouth at the end counts. For Kobayashi, that includes... Okay, so I'm not gonna make you look at a clear shot, but he puked a little bit. That would be disqualifying, but one might argue he recovered what he lost. Chestnut, meanwhile, is proficient at a technique they call chipmunking. He's got an unknown volume of meat and bun stuffed in his cheeks right now, it all counts. Point is, we won't get a final tally at the buzzer, but a review count will give us history, history at the signature event of an ancient tradition and very new sport, history made either by or against one of the most dominant athletes the world has ever known. Let's see if Takeru Kobayashi pulled out another victory for Japan or if Joey Chestnut will walk away with a world record and a title for the host nation. Welcome to a moment in history - In second place, Takeru Kobayashi. (audience cheers) In first place, with 66 hot dogs and buns, Joey Chestnut! (audience cheers) (TV clicks)