Joey Chestnut Breaking His Own Eating Record on Memorial Day

If there is anything that encapsulates American sporting prowess on the world stage, it’s Joey Chestnut stuffing his face and breaking yet another competitive-eating record — this time, one of his own.

If there were ever a Mt. Rushmore of sporting greats, sure, Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, and Tiger Woods may be three of the four faces carved into the granite wall. But, boy, if you have any sense, you sure as hell better make room for Chestnut, too.

When America has three-day weekends, who is there to provide the entertainment? When you need 83 hotdogs eaten in 10 minutes, who do you call? And when looking up the 55 world records in various eating disciplines, whose face do you see first? This guy’s … and he’s a true American hero.

It all popped off on Monday, the 26th of May — Memorial Day, and a national day off in the United States — as Joey Chestnut buttered up an absurd amount of popcorn and inhaled 42 servings in eight minutes, to smash a record that he had previously set himself.

At the South Terre Haute Rural King in Indiana, Chestnut did what Chestnut does best. He dominated. This is like Usain Bolt winning 55 gold medals for shaving seconds off his own 100-meter sprint record at each and every event he ever showed up for. It’s like Lionel Messi scoring howitzers all day, every day. This is Joey Chestnut taking the record that he set three years ago for 32 servings of popcorn in eight minutes, and, in 2025, finding the stomach capacity to almost double that. If this was medieval times, he’d have been given a kingdom by now.

At 6-foot-1 and 215 pounds, Chestnut may not appear like someone who eats colossal amounts of food for a living, but make no mistake, he’s done this before, and he’ll do this again. Typically renowned for his abillity to put away Nathan’s hot dogs, Chestnut has said he’s able to train for these events by fasting and stretching his stomach. Other food-eating records he’s held include chicken wings (182 wings in 30 minutes), hamburgers, pulled pork sandwiches, steak (72-ounces), hard-boiled eggs (141 in eight minutes), glazed doughnuts (55 in eight minutes), and Big Macs (32 in 38 minutes and 15 seconds).

He’s truly one of the great sporting athletes of our time. And I, for one, salute him.

Other competitive eaters include Takeru Kobayashi, who has pushed Chestnut close in various events, Matt Stonie, and Beard Meats Food from the UK.