Joey Chestnut is chomp champ again in July 4 hot dog contest

Frankfurter-munching phenom Joey “Jaws” Chestnut put a protester in a chokehold whereas gobbling his solution to a fifteenth win Monday on the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog consuming contest, powering down 63 hot canines and buns on the annual exhibition of extra.

In a decisive chowdown comeback, ladies’s record-holder Miki Sudo downed 40 wieners and buns to win the ladies’s title after skipping final yr’s frank fest as a result of she was pregnant.

A spectator sporting a Darth Vader masks rushed the stage, momentarily disrupting the competitors. Chestnut put the protester in a quick chokehold earlier than contest officers hurried over and escorted the intruder away.

Another protester in a white stormtrooper masks had additionally snuck behind the rivals and hoisted an indication saying, “Expose Smithfield’s Deathstar.” Smithfield manufactures Nathan’s well-known hotdogs.

After the altercation, Chestnut went again to the duty at hand: Devouring extra hot canines.

Monday marked the contest’s return to its conventional location exterior Nathan’s flagship store in Brooklyn’s Coney Island neighborhood. The occasion was relocated in 2020 and final yr due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s lovely to be again right here” in entrance of a throng of spectators, Chestnut instructed ESPN after his feat, which the 38-year-old managed whereas sporting a surgical boot due to a leg harm.

“It hurts, however I used to be in the zone for a little bit bit. I used to be ignoring it,” stated Chestnut, however the ache finally slowed his tempo in the 10-minute competitors.

Last yr, the Westfield, Indiana, resident topped his own record by consuming 76 franks and buns.

Sudo, of Tampa, Florida, set the women’s record at 48 1/2 weiners and buns in 2020, earlier than taking final yr off whereas anticipating. She and Nick Wehry — a fellow aggressive eater whom she met via the Nathan’s contest in 2018 — welcomed son Max on July 8, 2021.

From dad’s arms, the child watched his 36-year-old mom notch her eighth Nathan’s win. She instructed ESPN afterward that she hoped he would sometime take a message away from it.

“I wish to set an instance,” she stated, “to do issues that you simply love and push your self to your absolute limits and, when issues get troublesome, to nonetheless give it a strive. And, you already know, you would possibly truly simply come out victorious.”

Sudo then took over parenting duties whereas Wehry tried for the lads’s title.

In conjunction with the spectacle, Nathan’s donates 100,000 franks to the Food Bank for New York City.

Reporting by the Associated Press.