The world’s biggest eater will limp bravely into battle within the sport’s premiere occasion on Monday, July 4th.
Joey Chestnut shocked the competitive-eating group on Friday when he hobbled into Hudson Yards in New York Metropolis on crutches through the official weigh-in earlier than the 2022 Nathan’s Well-known Sizzling Canine Consuming Contest — a 4th of July custom on Coney Island.
“I’m gonna eat like a madman,” the world’s top-ranked eater instructed Fox Information Digital earlier than weighing in at 235 kilos.
“It’s a ruptured tendon,” he defined of his damage.
“It’s all proper. I’ll be capable to rise up and eat. I’m excited.”
The 14-time Nathan’s Well-known champion sported a black solid beneath his proper knee and walked with crutches underneath every arm.
“I’m not consuming with my leg,” Chestnut instructed followers.
Chestnut, 38, of Indiana, broke his personal world report final yr by consuming an unimaginable 76 sizzling canines and buns in simply 10 minutes on the 2021 Nathan’s Famous Sizzling Canine Consuming Contest.
He declined to specify the reason for his leg damage, saying solely that “life occurred.”
“When the barren hills and the cracked earth and the once-proud oceans drain to sand, there’ll nonetheless be a monument to our existence,” emcee and Nathan’s Well-known Sizzling Canine Consuming Contest host George Shea stated of the reigning champ.
“This man represents all that’s everlasting within the human spirit.”
The ladies’s division affords a extremely anticipated grudge match of the gullet between 2021 champion Michelle Lesco and the dynastic Miki Sudo, who received seven straight titles from 2014 to 2021.
Lesco missed the scaled-back 2020 competitors — held indoors that yr with out spectators — due to pandemic journey restrictions.
Sudo, the world’s top-ranked feminine eater, couldn’t compete final yr as a result of she was pregnant with Max, whose father is the no. 3-ranked males’s competitor Nick Wehry.
“I’m so excited to be again,” Sudo stated.
“It’s been some time since I’ve eaten sizzling canines earlier than a Coney Island crowd.”
The Nathan’s Well-known Sizzling Canine Consuming Contest was first held in 1916.
The Independence Day competitors returns on Monday to its conventional location on the nook of Surf and Stillwell Avenues for the primary time since 2019.
