by Ryan Nerz
To pay for her college education, Sonya went tonight school and worked during the day as a secretary. She found the job boring, but excelled in school, despite some limitations. “My IQ is not high, but I studied so hard. That’s me. That’s desire!” She earned a degree in hotel management and, in the midnineties, worked at a hotel in Japan.
In 1997, Sonya immigrated to America. She began working for a company that runs Burger Kings on military bases. She started at Fort Hood, in Texas, then transferred to Boiling, then to Andrews, both of which are in Washington, D.C. She was required to take an Army Air Force Exchange test for federal employees and, despite speaking scant English, completed it with the top grade in her class.
It was as a Burger King manager at Andrews Air Force Base that Sonya first stunned coworkers with her eating abilities. Instead of three meals a day, she would eat one extravagant midday feast. A standard meal included twenty chicken nuggets, a Chicken Whopper, three large fries, and a couple large diet Cokes. “I love to eat,” she says. Her ideal feast would take place at a Korean buffet, where she would throw down multiple plates of sushi, a few bowls of soup, a smattering of Korean meat and veggie dishes, and some fruit for dessert.
Sonya says if she could sing or act, she would use those skills to the fullest. But she has the skill of eating, so she uses it. In her mind, eating competitions have less to do with eating than competition. “Ten-minute contests are like sprinting, like fighting.” Sometimes she gets so caught up in the competition, she loses herself. She wants to win so badly that she finds herself feeling cold and selfish. “I have a heart. I’m a good person. But in competition, sometimes I’m not.”
Oddly, despite her world records in chicken wings, chicken nuggets, and hamburgers, Sonya doesn’t really like meat. Before age twenty-one, the only meats she’d eaten were eggs and fish. She has always been disgusted by raw meat and still can’t bring herself to touch it. She finds pork revolting. In fact, let the record show that when Sonya first tried chicken wings, they disgusted her. The pimply skin gave her the willies, because she could see where feathers had been. The smell of baked chicken and chicken broth nauseates her, she says, because it reminds her of the chicken’s demise. In general, Sonya feels a distinct compassion for an animal’s suffering in death, which sheds light on how much trauma that whole seagull incident must have caused. Sonya’s aversion to meat complicates the fact that, over the next four days, she will eat no less than 350 chicken wings.
The 2004 Erie Regional Buffalo Wing-Eating Championship turns out to be a doozy. It is held near the entrance of Jerry Uht Park before an Erie SeaWolves AA minor league baseball game. A local rock station, Star 104, is playing pop hits and a hundred or so competitive-eating fans have gathered for the spectacle.
“I must say that there’s been a lot of doubt in the competitive-eating community about how fast the people of Erie can eat chicken wings,” I say. “But today is your chance to prove those doubters wrong.” I explain that this is a historic opportunity to upset one of the greatest competitive eaters in the world. “If one of your proud stomachs steps up to the plate and pulls off this upset it will be huge. I’m talking huge like when Ali upset Liston, like when Douglas took down Tyson…like when the U.S. Olympic hockey team stole the gold from the Russians!”
I’m feeling it now, as if maybe I’m starting to win over some Sea-Wolves fans. I’m starting to gain confidence in my emceeing skills, learning to channel the Shea brothers, and even becoming a “hot dog” at times on the mic. I introduce the Erie eaters. There’s Nate Matusiak, a baby-faced 375-pound car salesman who claims to be the 1998 Duquesne University Greek Week Hot Dog Eating Champ. (Who am I to challenge this claim?) There’s Mike “the Destroyer” Dembinski, a 210-pound steelworker who’s been eating jalapenos to increase his intestinal fortitude. Nasty Nick McKay is a Big Mac specialist, and Jammin’ Jessica Curry is a cute Star 104 morning talk show host.
From left, the author, the Black Widow, the Wing King (in his cape and tumescent orange hat), and rookie eater Nate Matusiak share a naive smile on the Wing Tour’s first stop in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Sonya buries them all. She drops sixty-one, while the runner-up, Matusiak, does thirty-two. It’s a classic case of men versus boys, only it’s not. After the contest, Sonya wipes the orange from her cheeks, smiles, and waves to the crowd like a princess. The people of Erie adore her.
Afterward, I change out of the carnival barker apparel and into something more comfortable. In need of some me time, I amble into the SeaWolves game, grab a cold Bud, and go bask in the rafter sunshine. A voice-mail check includes an ecstatic message from a friend who has just seen “Man Versus Beast,” the Fox special in which Kobayashi competes against a Kodiak bear in a hot-dog-eating contest. Just as I’m starting to feel like a fish out of water, I notice a crew of hooligans seated next to the infield, heckling the opposing team’s first baseman. Spotting the unmistakable wing helmet/brain tumor, I realize the Wing King himself is affiliated with these guys and walk down to join them.
Turns out the Wing King is hanging with Sonya, Lon, Nate Matusiak, and a pack of Matusiak’s friends. Everyone’s drinking except Sonya, who explains she can’t drink because she hates the smell of alcohol. Matusiak’s friends are characters. One of them is unemployed and says he wants my job. Another round of beer arrives.
“Let’s get the wave going,” somebody says. We start a recruiting mission among people seated near us to stand up when we say so and start the wave. After a few pathetic attempts, although the stadium is at roughly 20 percent capacity, we get it going. It goes around twice and dies. We start it again. It occurs to me that this is the closest I’ve been to a Bull Durham experience. I must be getting drunk.
The problem is, whenever I emcee these eating contests, I lose my appetite. All I’ve eaten all day is a handful of chicken wings, and the tension of performing in front of people I don’t know induces the urge to drink. The Wing King comes up and says we have a problem. We have to drive to Pittsburgh tonight, because we have a radio spot at 7:00 A.M. tomorrow. But we’re in no position to drive. Matusiak and his boys overhear and assure us that we’re not going anywhere. When the game ends, they march us over to a nearby hotel and we book rooms.
What happens after that is a blur. We walk to a bar called Fat Boys, where we are treated like royalty. The owner, a good friend of Matusiak and his buddies, introduces Sonya Thomas to the bar as a special guest celebrity. There’s a big round of applause. We drink and chat with Matusiak’s parents outside on the porch. Jell-O shots happen and we are treated to several varieties of chicken wings, the most memorable being a delightful garlic Parmesan variety. The only evidence of what happens next is a picture on my cell phone of the Wing King crouching near a sign that says FAT BOYS TUESDAY 25 CENT DRAFTS. When the lights finally go out on Erie, Pennsylvania, it is late and I am but a shell of a man.
JUNE 23, 2004
DARK WEDNESDAY
We’re driving to Pittsburgh on three hours of sleep. What seemed like a good idea just a few hours ago now reveals itself as a cruel joke. It’s inky black out and still nowhere near what I consider to be morning. Sonya, who has made it clear that she doesn’t function well without at least eight hours of sleep, is passed out beside me in the backseat. At traffic-light stops, I grab glimpses of the newspaper. Grim news. In Iraq, insurgents have beheaded a Korean translator named Kim Sun-II.
We roll into the hills and bridges of Pittsburgh right as morning rush hour hits and struggle to find the Infinity Broadcasting building. When we finally arrive, our EMTs are waiting in the parking lot for us. They insist on rolling a stretcher into the radio studio, just in case a bone gets lodged in some poor deejay’s throat. Everybody at the radio station is psyched to see our bizarre entourage—the Wing King, a tiny female Asian eating champion, a trough of steaming hot wings, and a medical crew with a stretcher.
We walk into the studio of the B 93.7 morning show. Sonya is forced to answer the same pat questions
that she’s always asked. “How do you stay so thin? Where does it all go?” It goes forward in the usual fashion, culminating in another two-minute eating exhibition. Toward the end of the minicontest, the deejay named Shelly unleashes a couple of overtly catty comments. First, she says that Sonya “looks like an animal.” Then she says with wrinkled nose that she “wouldn’t want to eat with her, because it’s disgusting.” When the competition ends, Shelly asks Sonya directly whether she pukes after contests. Sonya shakes her head adamantly. I’m stunned and feel compelled to defend her, but my role as picture-taker doesn’t afford me a microphone, so there’s no opportunity.
Afterward, in the SUV, I ask whether anyone else was offended by Shelly’s comments. This is a bad call on my part, but my brain is fatigued and I feel the need to convey that someone should have defended Sonya. Drew Cerza and Lon both didn’t seem to notice. Maybe I’m being too sensitive. (I’m none too bummed to discover, a few months later, that the B 93.7 morning show has been taken off the air for bad ratings and replaced by Howard Stern.) Sonya, who is generally nonjudgmental, seems not to have been offended, but my recap of Shelly’s comments incites something in her, and she suggests that maybe Shelly was jealous. “When I work with a woman, they are always so jealous. Always. But a man, never jealous.”
I let the topic drop, but it resurfaces in mutated form when Sonya and I start discussing the headlines in USA Today. There’s an article about Mary-Kate Olsen having checked into rehab for anorexia. I point out a picture of an emaciated Mary-Kate at a Laker’s game, and Sonya reacts with disgust. “Look at her legs,” she says, adding that anorexic women are sick in the head. “They eat a little bit, then look in the mirror and see huge fat woman.” Though she doesn’t say it directly, I understand that she’s insisting—as I’ve read in a few articles about her—that she doesn’t suffer from an eating disorder.
I believe her. I have spent quite a bit of time with Sonya, before and after contests, and I have never seen any behavior worthy of suspicion. But that doesn’t keep the competitive-eating rumor mills from churning. I have even heard accusations that her teeth are discolored, but my observations don’t verify this, and it strikes me as unfair. I believe that her slender physique is due to an abnormally high metabolism combined with an obsessive workout schedule. (One might accuse her of being a workaholic and workout-aholic, but these are relatively healthy habits, especially among competitive eaters.) On any given day, she works ten hours, runs on a treadmill for two hours, and eats only one big meal. It’s a matter of calories in minus calories out. If you do the math, it’s no wonder she’s thin.
Unsurprisingly, though, my badgering has taken its toll on Sonya. Realizing there’s no end in sight to her having to eat wings for the amusement of others, Sonya’s normally sunny mood darkens. “I’m so disappointed,” she says. “It’s like prison, you know? Just to the hotel, then eat chicken wings, then to the hotel.” When she realizes that, actually, we have no intention of getting hotel rooms today, because we plan to leave for Columbus, Ohio, immediately after the contest, Sonya flips. It’s not so much a diva moment as a woman pushed beyond her limit. After a brief negotiation, Drew agrees to put us both up in a hotel for the day.
It turns out to be a wise investment. Sonya goes for a power nap, and I go straight to the bathroom. Seems that my buffalo-wing-only diet is vehemently at odds with my digestive tract. Later, unable to sleep, I go for a jog, buy some baby powder, and eat the most glorious salad of my life at a local eatery.
It’s a whole new world. Sonya’s in good spirits again, and my Johnson’s baby powder works wonders. We take a cab to the competition site, in the parking lot of a mall on the outskirts of Pittsburgh amidst an antique-car show. Sonya’s challenger is Big Brian Subich, whom I know from the noodle contest. He’s smiley and enthusiastic, and his wife adds a sprinkle of sanity to the whole affair. Subich explains that his eating career began with a bet from a friend over McDonald’s double cheeseburgers. The contest is well received, even if the car people seem confused as to why we’re here. Sonya wins.
After the contest, Drew allows me to drive Sonya to our next stop, Columbus. Her mood has lifted considerably. She talks freely about various eating injuries she’s suffered. At a shrimp-eating contest that was covered by FHM magazine, she got a cut in her throat. She was still recovering from the injury at her Bacci Pizza Eating Championship victory, where she cut the roof of her mouth. She talks about her food preferences. She loves watermelon, but hates all things McDonald’s except for the shakes. Her favorite food is Burger King french fries with salt and pepper, she says, rolling her eyes up in what looks like a gustatorgasm. We stop for dinner at Burger King, and I must admit the fries are delicious. Feels great to have expanded my diet from deep-fried poultry to deep-fried potatoes.
JUNE 24, 2004
COLUMBUS, OHIO
The scourge returns. Sonya and I have trouble rousing for the morning radio publicity, and Drew is rightfully disappointed. Our spot with the Wags & Elliot Show is both funny and tasteful, and I’m not offended that they don’t remember my call-in interview from the noodle contest.
That afternoon, Sonya and I are running late for the contest. It’s supposed to take place at Nationwide Arena, but I can’t find parking. I’m sweating bullets. I’m not used to driving, and I’m stuck on a downtown street that won’t allow you to turn right. Will I have to drive straight forever? Frazzled, I park the car and say we’ll just have to walk. Sonya’s not happy. Drew’s pissed. We walk for blocks, and Sonya’s going at a snail’s pace behind me. When we arrive in front of the arena, the only people there are Brett Barna, the noodle champ, and a few of his buddies.
As I introduce Brett, he makes a request. “If I can eat more than half the amount of wings as Sonya, will she give me a kiss?” Sonya’s face reddens, and I’m flummoxed. She accepts the bet. When the competition ends, I announce that Brett has finished with just over half of her total. Sonya looks uncomfortable. After an awkward moment, she concedes a peck on the cheek. After the contest, Sonya, Lon, and I go with Brett’s friends to a Chinese buffet. Sonya, who is suddenly effervescent again, astounds everyone by knocking down three stacked plates.
JUNE 24, 2004
CLEVELAND
The Wing Tour rages on. The Marriott Residence Inn is so nice that I’m ready to make it home. I play basketball in the courtyard with a couple of kids. One tiny tadpole of a boy says his family’s here because they’ve lost their home in a fire. I talk to Lon, who gladly offers me a tray of wings to give to the kid’s family. Lon and I go out for drinks. Over beer and a plate of Jamaican jerk wings, I conclude that Lon is the only one among us with the slightest shred of sanity left.
JUNE 25
Due to inclement weather, the Wing Tour Cleveland Regional takes place in a vast open area within a crowded mall, the Galleria. The free wings that Lon and the Wing King hand out are snapped up in a matter of minutes. A crowd of a thousand, many of whom are peering over the second and third-floor banisters, gather to watch the showdown between Sonya and Kevin “the Carburetor” Carr, the man who suffered the noodle reversal.
“Good people of Cleveland,” I say. “Just a few years ago, an idea was hatched by our good friend the Wing King that each Labor Day, in the city of Buffalo, the world would gather to celebrate the birthplace of the buffalo wing. He took this idea and flew with it, and the National Buffalo Wing Festival was born. Now, over the past week, the Wing King and I have traveled across this great country in search of talented chicken-eaters, and I assure you that it has been an emotional journey. We have opened up the coops in Buffalo, Erie, Pittsburgh, and Columbus, but as yet no one has proved to be a bigger enemy to chicken-kind than this young lady right here, Sonya Thomas.”
The crowd cheers. Sonya smiles and waves.
“But I must say, Cleveland, that I have a bone to pick with you. The Wing King and I spent all day yesterday prowling the streets of this fair city in search of eaters looking to eat their way
to the top of the pecking order. And time and time again, the people of Cleveland have chickened out, intimidated by the size of Sonya’s formidable gullet. We have heard time and time again, and I quote, that it ain’t no thing but a chicken wing.”
There are more groans than laughter, but I sense that the crowd is with me.
“I assure you, Cleveland, that it is much, much more than just a chicken wing. Specifically, it is as many chicken wings as you can eat in five minutes. And only one man has stepped up to place the weight of Cleveland’s competitive-eating dreams on his weary shoulders. Please welcome a wing-eating champ who very nearly set the world noodle-eating record just weeks ago, Mister…Kevin…the Carburetor…Carrrrrr!”
The crowd cheers for its local contender. That Kevin Carr isn’t actually from Cleveland is, for the moment, irrelevant.
“Now, I wouldn’t get your hopes up just yet because it’s gonna be a cockfight, folks. Our next competitor has records in not only chicken, but in cheesecake, deep-fried asparagus, fruitcake, hamburgers, barbecue sandwiches, oysters, and chicken soft tacos. In perhaps her most stunning feat, which earned her the coveted Cool Hand Luke Award, she ate sixty-five hard-boiled eggs in under seven minutes. Please welcome the little lady with a leg up over all the competition…she is known as the Black Widow, she is known as the One. She is Sonya Thomassssss!”
The crowd roars. We do the countdown and start the contest. I’ve pretty much used up all my poultry puns, but I keep pitching anyway. It’s a chicken-eat-chicken world! Did I hear somebody cry fowl? Which came first, the chicken leg or the chicken egg? God, am I exhausted. The contest ends and—shocker—Sonya wins again. We say a quick good-bye to Kevin, his wife, and their two little ones. I couldn’t exit the Galleria Mall any quicker. It’s a long drive back to Buffalo, and I sincerely hope I never see a chicken wing again.
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