Joey Chestnut is back on top of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, winning his 17th Mustard Belt in 20 years after being banned from the annual Fourth of July competition on Coney Island last year over a contract dispute.
Chestnut ate 70.5 hot dogs in 10 minutes to win the contest, beating the next closest competitor Patrick Bertoletti, who won the contest in 2024 in Chestnut’s absence and who ate 46 hot dogs this year.
Nathan’s also held a women’s contest that was won by Miki Sudo with 33 hot dogs a year after she ate a record 51.
Chestnut set the all-time record for the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest in 2021 with 76 hot dogs. His only defeat in competition at the contest since 2007 came in 2015 in a loss to Matt Stonie by a count of 62-60. .
Last year, Chestnut was not allowed to compete in the contest after he struck a deal with the vegan food brand Impossible Foods. Chestnut told The Associated Press last month that he had never appeared in any commercials for the company’s vegan hot dogs and that Nathan’s is the only hot dog company he has worked with. But Chestnut acknowledged he “should have made that more clear with Nathan’s.”
In lieu of appearing at Coney Island last year, Chestnut participated in an exhibition contest with Army soldiers at Fort Bragg in Texas, where he ate 57 hot dogs in five minutes. Two months later, he faced off against his longtime rival, Takeru Kobayashi, in a Netflix special and came out victorious in the Japanese competitive eater’s final contest.
