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There will probably never be a competitive eater who comes close to achieving what Joey Chestnut has over the course of his career. However, there was once a worthy foe who was able to give him a run for his money: Takeru Kobayashi, the Japanese legend who decided to retire from the sport after it managed to warp his brain.
On July 4, 2001, the competitive eater that most people simply refer to as “Kobayashi” headed to Coney Island for the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.
One of his fellow countrymen (a wiry mattress salesman named Kazutoyo Arai) had set the all-time record the previous year by housing 25 1/8 wieners in the span of 12 minutes, but that mark was shattered by the time Kobayashi walked off the stage after cramming 50 of them down his gullet.
Kobayashi would ultimately win that contest six years in a row before Joey Chestnut outate him in 2007 to kick off one of the greatest athletic dynasties in history.
That marked the start of a fairly short-lived rivalry that ended when Kobayashi was banned from the annual showdown over a contract dispute that led to him being arrested at the contest in 2010. That development allowed Chestnut to ascend to the competitive eating throne, but it didn’t stop the man who gave up his crown from continuing to pursue his passion.
As things currently stand, Kobayashi still holds three world records listed on the Major League Eating website (they concern rice balls, cow brains, and lobster rolls). According to The New York Post, it’s unlikely the 46-year-old will break any others after revealing he’s decided to call it quits in a new documentary.
The outlet reports Kobayashi revealed his decision in the Netflix doc Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut while discussing the unexpected toll that more than two decades of competitive eating took on him, saying “I worry about the consequences of my decision, but most importantly, I want to repair my brain and gut.”
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There are obviously plenty of physical risks that come with cramming thousands of calories into your stomach as quickly as possible on a regular basis, but doctors who ran a brain scan on Kobayashi—who has reached a point where he’s rarely hungry and can go days without eating—says his brain has become conditioned to trigger feelings of nausea when he simply looks at food.
It’s hard to blame him for deciding to move on.