Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit

by Ryan Nerz

  Our final contestant was a Goliath, a heavyweight on the circuit. The current world oyster-eating champion, his intimate knowledge of both meat and pies would certainly aid him in the meat pie discipline. Just months ago, he won the ACME Oyster Eating Championship in N’awlins. And just weeks ago, in Newport News, Virginia, he had put down a six-pound burger and a pound of fries in under a half hour. Though these eating exploits were impressive, his second-place finish in the recent World Crawfish Eating Championship proved that he was, in fact, mortal. “Please welcome to the competitive-eating table a resident of Hammond, Louisiana, standing six foot five and tipping the scales at a mighty 340 pounds, Blazin’…Amazin’…Bayou Boyd Buloootttt!”

  The cheer was loud but tepid—clearly a regionally patriotic crowd. I explained the rules. Half, whole, and quarter meat pies consumed would count toward the final tally. Dunking was permitted. If an eater suffered a reversal of fortune, or what we call on the circuit “urges contrary to swallowing,” he or she would be disqualified. The winner would receive $500 and the coveted title of World Meat Pie Eating Champion. The crowd helped me count down from ten, and they were off.

  The contest was a blur. I said “meat pie” as many times as possible, because I liked the sound of it. There were no meat pie reversals, so the metal vomit pails to the left of each eater remained empty. Bayou Boyd Bulot, the only professional in the bunch, got out of the gates at a full sprint, took an early lead, and never looked back. At the six-minute mark, the amateurs started to slump over and chew slowly, staring helplessly at their meat pies like dazed cattle. I explained to the crowd that this phenomenon was known on the circuit as “hitting the wall,” which was roughly equivalent to the strain felt by a runner at the twenty-mile point of a marathon. “Help ’em out, folks!” I said. “Help ’em over the wall!” At seven minutes, the nice, illiterate Cajun man stepped away from the table. All the while, Bulot kept inhaling meat pies like a magpie would worms.

  When the final whistle blew, Bulot had downed sixteen meat pies, a total of six pounds, to set the world record. Second place went to a local upstart, Hungry Shawn Hornsby, who finished with a respectable seven. After declaring Bulot the victor, I walked over to personally congratulate him. “Those deep-fried pies were kinda tough to get through,” he said, admitting that he’d suffered some battle wounds. He had cuts on the roof of his mouth, and I noticed that the trauma of cramming meat pies had left an oversized deposit of snot beneath his right nostril. I handed him a tissue and gave him a congratulatory pat on the back.

  After the contest, I absconded to my rental car and changed out of my soaked suit. A woman named Mary Ann Nunley, assistant to the mayor, escorted me to a vague civic building for some sort of reception. There was air-conditioning, food, beer, and an LSU football game on TV. Smiling strangers shook my hand, asked me about New York, the contest, and how I’d gotten this bizarre job. I met Burgundy L. Olivier, the spinach-obsessed author of I Love Spinach, who drives a green minivan called the Spinach Mobile. I was tempted to ask if she had Popeye fantasies, but decided against it. Everyone was exceedingly pleasant, but I felt frazzled and needed some alone time.

  On the way back to Maison Louisiane, I ran into Boyd, who was walking around the festival with Heather, his friend from the kitchen. They were both smiling, and I thought to myself that all’s well that ends well. I asked Boyd how he was feeling. Was he full? “Not at all,” Boyd replied. “After the competition, I went to that restaurant up the hill and got me an order of the surf ’n’ turf.”

  4

  The Eruption of Dale Boone

  Go for gold or explode!

  —Dale Boone

  Dale “Mouth of the South” Boone, the man every competitive eating fan loves to hate, rings his cowbell before a contest.

  OCTOBER 3, 2003

  There is a spot just below the mouth and directly above the chin, which is known on the competitive-eating circuit as the Blind Spot. At this spot, for a brief nanosecond, a competitive eater cannot see the food before it enters his mouth. Amateurs are severely hampered by the Blind Spot, but professional eaters go right through it without hesitation.”

  The crowd at the World Pulled Pork Barbecue Eating Championship is not amused by my drivel. After what I considered a rather bland performance in Natchitoches, I’ve decided to try out new, more experimental material. But judging from the blank stares of a few hundred locals at Crossroads Arena in Corinth, Mississippi, the material isn’t striking a cord. But at least my co-emcee, Dave Baer, is laughing.

  The main thing we’ve got going for us is a solid cast of eaters. Thanks to the gracious offer of $2,000 in prize money by a man named Reggie Churchwell (who reminds me of Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard), we’ve got three topflight competitive eaters. Reggie’s the promoter of the Hog Wild Festival, a barbecue-cooking competition that features over thirty cooking teams. As accompanying entertainment, Reggie has also arranged a giant carnival, an ugly-truck contest, a hog-calling contest, and the first-ever sanctioned eating competition involving pulled-pork barbecue sandwiches.

  As the crowd trickles—and trickles is the right term here—into the arena, our warm-up jokes are met with mild enthusiasm at best. Part of the problem is the size of this place. Crossroads Arena can seat ten thousand. In an attempt to spark up some smiles, I give an impromptu history of the sport, starting at the very beginning. “The origins of competitive eating date back to the earliest days of mankind. If you have thirty Neanderthals in a cave and a rabbit walks in, that’s a competitive-eating situation.” This gets some laughs. It’s a line from my notes that I’ve stolen almost verbatim from the IFOCE Web site.

  Dave takes over, lays down the tale of the tape. Today’s matchup will feature not only a handful of Mississippi’s most ravenous, but three of the finest gurgitators in the world as well, including the 2002 IFOCE Rookie of the Year, Dale Boone, one of the most colorful characters on the circuit, who claims to be a direct descendant of Daniel Boone.

  “Yee-hawwwww!” That’s Dale Boone. He grabs my microphone and starts ranting at the crowd and his fellow eaters, in keeping with his reputation as the league’s most volatile combatant. A balding, big-bellied country boy wearing a coonskin cap, Dale tugs at the suspenders of his overalls and tells the crowd his opponents don’t know nothin’ about barbecue. Trying to drum up some Southern patriotism, he promises to keep the barbecue belt in the land of Dixie. He may look and sound like a hick, but Dale, a producer of Southeast Asian–oriented television programming in Atlanta, understands that this is entertainment. The crowd’s suddenly engaged and awake, if not a little perplexed.

  Dave explains that the contest will be no cakewalk for Boone. In addition to a slew of hungry Corinthians, there’s Jammin’ Joe LaRue, an underrated Florida hot-dog-eating champ who has just recovered from a career-threatening knee injury. Jammin’ Joe walks onstage and waves to the crowd. Jammin’ Joe is huge, with a forehead so prominent it makes you think of evolution. For this reason, George Shea often introduces him as “the missing link, not between man and ape…but between man and God.”

  “But the real threat to Boone’s chances today is the woman known as the Black Widow,” Dave says. A dainty little wisp of an Asian woman bounds up onto the stage, waving and smiling. You can see the faint outline of a rib cage beneath her black DKNY T-shirt. She has long, black hair, a pretty face with a chiseled jaw, and the waifish frame of an undernourished teenage girl—the antithesis of what one would imagine a champion gurgitator to look like. The people of Corinth don’t know what to think, so they just clap and look at each other.

  Sonya Thomas has recently emerged as the most naturally dominant competitive eater ever to hit the circuit. After watching footage of Kobayashi destroying much larger opponents at the 2002 Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, she had a vision. Aware of her inordinate appetite, she surfed the Internet and discovered a Nathan’s qualifying event at the Molly Pitcher rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. In late June
of 2003, she took a vacation day from her job as assistant manager of the Burger King at Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs, Maryland. Racing in just before the contest started, she ate eighteen hot dogs and buns in twelve minutes, handily beating a dozen guys twice her size. A month later, on the Fourth of July in Coney Island, Sonya upped her total to twenty-five dogs, setting a new women’s record. In August, she won the Hardee’s World Thickburger Eating Contest, knocking down seven twelve-ounce burgers in ten minutes. In September, she beat out top-ranked gurgitators Cookie Jarvis and Badlands Booker in chicken soft tacos, downing 43½ in eleven minutes. Despite her improbable dominance, Sonya claimed to reporters that her skills were all natural—she never trained.

  “At a hundred pounds, she is living proof that competitive eating isn’t just a big man’s sport,” Dave explains. “Just weeks ago, in front of thousands of screaming Godsmack fans in Indianapolis, she ate sixty-five hard-boiled eggs in under seven minutes, setting a new world record. She has been described as a cross between Billie Jean King, Anna Kournikova, and a wild jackal loose on the Serengeti. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the eater known as the Black Widow, Ms. Sonya Thomas!”

  The sound guy cues the theme music—time for formal introductions. The sandwiches are brought out in trays of ten apiece. As we start announcing the local contestants, the crowd warms up immeasurably. The question is, do Jeff “the Stuffer” Stark, John “All Gone” Walker, Tim “the Tornado” Roberson, or Jimmy “Bring the Pain” Spain have what it takes to claim one of the top three spots? It will be an uphill battle, but perhaps the locals’ experience with pulled-pork barbecue sandwiches will level the playing field. I announce that, just an hour before the competition, Sonya Thomas sampled a barbecue sandwich for the first time in her life, and this unfamiliarity may be to her disadvantage. After introducing the locals, it’s time to call out the big guns.

  “As an unknown rookie,” Dave said. “This next contestant placed second in the conch-fritter-eating championship, eating forty-one fritters in six minutes. He is the current Florida hot-dog eating champion with nineteen hot dogs and buns in twelve minutes. Please welcome a chef from Hollywood, Florida, who stands six feet eight and weighs 280 pounds…Jammin’…Joe…LaRue!”

  It’s my turn. I look down at my notes at the list of names that Dale Boone has scribbled on my notepad. “Our next eater needs no introduction, because his mouth and his cowbell precede him. He is the pelmeni-eating champion of the world! He is the reindeer-sausage-eating champion of the world! He is an American icon and a gustatory pioneer who traces his roots back to Daniel Boone. Please welcome…the son of Otto Jack, the son of Hudson Daniel, son of James Andrew, son of Robert Nelson, son of James, son of Jeremiah, son of Thomas, son of Jonathan, who is the son of Daniel Boone! Give it up for Dale ‘Mouth of the South’ Boone!”

  Dale makes his grand entrance, complete with bell-ringing, yee-hawing, and smack talk. Dave steps to the front of the stage. He explains the Sonya Thomas saga and rattles off her recent flurry of records. Then he puts his finger to his lips to convey the gravity of the moment. “Good people of Corinth, there is a century-old prophecy on the circuit, dismissed by some, that foretells the rise of the One Eater. Like Joan of Arc before her, this chosen eater would be female and slight of stature, but prodigious of appetite. We at the IFOCE believe that this next eater is the living fulfillment of that prophecy. Please put your hands together for The One…Ms. Sonya Thomassss!”

  The crowd cheers, but almost hesitantly, as if this might be some sort of prank—a reality show where the joke’s on them. We ask them to help us count down from ten, and the eating begins. Sonya, Dale, and Jammin’ Joe all go with a dunking method from jump. The local eaters start with the purist approach, but after the first few minutes, they’re following the pros’ examples. Two minutes in, Boone and Sonya are neck and neck, jowl to jowl, with Jammin’ Joe trailing not far behind. Three minutes in, I notice that two local eaters are right behind Jammin’ Joe. While Dave calls out Sonya’s steadily rising total—“Folks, that’s nine sandwiches in just over three minutes!”—I focus on the local battle between Tim the Tornado and Stuffer Stark, both of whom have large fan blocs in the audience.

  A little over seven minutes in, the eaters begin to hit the wall. I look over and see that something’s happening to Dale. His face is glowing pink, and the beads of sweat dotting his forehead are turning into drips. His eating has slowed almost to a halt, and his eyes are getting wide. It’s a disquieting sight to behold.

  “Dale Boone seems to be showing signs of distress,” I announce. “But there’s no cause for concern—he’s a professional. Dale suffers from the meat sweats, a lesser-known disorder in which protein enzymes mix with adrenaline to cause both delirium and an extremely malodorous form of sweat.” I’m trying to comfort crowd members in the front few rows, who look concerned about the eruption of Mt. Boone. And to be honest, they have ample reason to be concerned. A notoriously reckless eater, Dale informed me before the contest that, for reasons unclear, he had agreed to perform a doughnut-eating exhibition on a Tupelo morning news show just hours before the contest. He ate twenty-five glazed doughnuts in a few minutes, a dubious game-day decision.

  “Folks,” Dave says, “it appears that Dale Boone has reached a breaking point but heroically chooses to eat on.”

  “That’s right, Dave,” I say. “And it is that very spirit of perseverance that carried his distant grandfather Daniel Boone through the hard-fought battles of the French and Indian War.”

  But Dale’s stomach has its own agenda. He has stepped away from the table and is rocking back and forth in a self-comforting, cradlelike motion. Suddenly, he bolts upright and lurches forward. His cheeks puff out, and he puts his hand over his mouth. The crowd gasps. Dale rushes to the back of the stage, jogs down the stairs, and embraces a huge industrial trashcan.

  “Elvis has left the building!” Dave announces with gusto.

  “It is known by many names on the competitive-eating circuit,” I add. “Some call it the reversal of fortune, and to others it is known as a Roman incident…you may use the colloquial term puking.”

  “No matter what you call it,” Dave chimes in, “it’s against the rules. Dale Boone has been disqualified for an incident deemed contrary to the integrity of the sport.”

  The crowd whoops and hollers. Just as some hockey fans come for the fights, or NASCAR fans for the crashes, some competitive-eating fans apparently come for the vomit.

  “An unfortunate turn of events,” I say. “But where tragedy strikes, opportunity knocks. Two of your local eaters, Stuffer Stark and Tim the Tornado, are in a dead heat for the $250 third prize. Come on, folks…give it up for your local eaters!”

  Now the crowd’s totally into it. The drama between the two locals compensates nicely for Dale’s absence and Sonya’s dominance. To get a better look at her progress, I walk out to the front of the eating table. Less than a minute to go and she’s chewing almost viciously, her stuffed cheeks all chipmunked out like Dizzy Gillespie’s in midsolo. The woman is insatiable. When the final whistle blows, she’s eaten twenty-three sandwiches in ten minutes, setting a world record and winning $1,250 for her efforts. Dave hands her the ornately decorated barbecue belt, which, unsurprisingly, doesn’t fit her tiny waist. When she raises it over her head, giggling like a schoolgirl, the crowd gives her a standing ovation.

  Jammin’ Joe LaRue is officially off the injured reserve list and will pocket $500 for his second place finish of sixteen sandwiches. A local lone wolf, Tim the Tornado Roberson, ekes out third place with eleven sandwiches, one sandwich ahead of Stuffer Stark.

  After the competition, I pose for some photos with Sonya, whom I find legitimately awe-inspiring. Besides the shrapnel left at her spot at the table, no evidence remains that she just participated in an eating contest. Her makeup isn’t smudged, her face and shirt are immaculate, and she claims she’s still hungry. In the background, I can hear Dave speaking to a reporter. “
If Sonya Thomas truly is the One,” he says, “then tonight marked yet another chapter in the fulfillment of the prophecy.”

  Sonya Thomas raises the coveted Barbecue Belt aloft for the crowd while Jammin’ Joe LaRue looks on with envy.

  Boone walks up, shaking his head shamefully. He complains that his “incident” wasn’t his fault—it was caused by the doughnut eat-off he did earlier. When Dave reminds him that his participation in that eat-off was entirely voluntary, he’s indignant but fails to offer a compelling rebuttal.

  An hour or so later, as I’m leaving Crossroads Arena, Sonya Thomas approaches me, looking concerned. She explains that Dale Boone told her he wanted to check out the barbecue belt. She claims she handed Boone the belt and she hasn’t seen him since. We call Boone. He’s back at the hotel, and he’s got the belt. “It was just a joke,” he says, cackling like a fiend. “I’ll give it back.”

  A few months after the barbecue contest, I ask Dale about what went down in Corinth. He explains that the morning news show coerced him into eating those doughnuts. They interviewed him briefly and then, before cutting to a commercial, coldcocked him out of nowhere with this on-air announcement: “And when we return, Dale Boone will perform a doughnut-eating exhibition.”

  As for the regurgitation, Dale says that was the result of his unquenchable desire for victory. Though his stomach capacity had been compromised by the doughnut exhibition, his competitive instincts would not let him settle for second place. “When I threw up there in Mississippi, it was point-blank. I was goin’ for gold. There is no second place in my name. My mind-set for the day was ‘Go for gold or explode’…and I exploded.”