Also media. I'm going to tell you about three American ring masters. The first is the guy you think of when you think of ring masters. If you think of ring masters, think of a ring master, you're probably thinking of P. T. Barnum, or as many people call him, who was Hugh Jackman supposed to be in the Greatest Showman P T.
Barnum at your service fee by putting together a show policies and I need a star every one of us.
Especial and nobody is like any one us.
Well, he's supposed to be P. T. Barnum. And sorry, I hadn't seen this movie, but it's so fucking bad, Like it's worse than my favorite bad biopic twenty fourteen's Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher as one Steve Jobs.
What are you gonna you get to fire me?
No?
I already fired.
You A perfect impression. That's Steve alright.
But P. T.
Barnum was, in fact a famous American promoter and circusman, presented in this twenty seventeen Disney movie as an awesome guy who empowered other people by displaying them in a freak show for personal profit. Truly wild that they tried it. It's a totally dishonest hero narrative and it made half a billion dollars and P. T. Barnum would have loved that. He was a fucking liar. So who was the real Barnum?
He was the guy who started his career as a displayer of quote unquote human curiosities by purchasing and displaying a disabled, enslaved woman named Joyce Heath, who he lied to indicate was the one hundred and sixty one year old nurse of the long dead George Washington. Slavery wasn't even legal in New York at this time. Barnum had to find a loophole in order to exploit Heath's labor, and when she passed away, he charged civilian's fifty cents
to watch a live autun of her corpse. This was a guy who targeted vulnerable families with quote unquote unusual children like Charles Stratton, a child with Dwarfism, and Annie Jones, the baby who had become the Bearded Lady, and there shown in the Greatest Showmen as consenting adult parties, when in reality they were displayed as freaks starting when they were under five years old. Same goes for the underlying racism and xenophobia of displaying children from El Salvador as
mysticized as tech twins. The list goes on, Barnum's act was so ablest racist and xenophobic that people in the eighteen hundreds knew it was that. But Barnum himself was a character within the world of this circus. He was always at the center of it, and with the character of Barnum came a necessity to control the narrative of that character. Ringmaster I probably the most successful of the
last century. This Ringmaster did not just become a multi millionaire off a tremendously successful, deeply exploited a franchise, but managed to make himself a character within that world more successfully than Barnum ever. Did somebody call my mom?
I am the Boss?
Vincent J. McMahon, like Barnum before him, McMahon wrote himself a character in his own circus, only to be publicly disgraced in the last few years. He is, of course, the extremely successful owner of the WWE, who turned his father's wrestling franchise into an empire that wasn't strictly focused on athletics, but just as much on the personas of
the wrestlers themselves. Professional wrestling is soap operas that straight men are allowed to cry at right, and the characters that McMahon built reflect a lot of the same prejudices that we were seeing in Barnum's Act one hundred years earlier. It's a short road to finding racism, sexism, and xenophobia in the way these characters are presented. Here is Vince McMahon in character talking to a character named Saboo.
We'll be damned. I thought I was in Texas. Hell, I'm not in Texas. I'm an a Danastan.
Hey, boys, check it out.
Here's a member of the Taliban.
All wait a minute, I know you. You're the guy Saboo.
This is just a random example, but you name a racial or ethnic group and the WWE has created a character to offend them, either to appeal to American jingoism or to make people hate the character mister McMahon, who is supposed to be evil. This is a constant distinction made by Vince McMahon, the actual McMahon. It's the character who's evil. The man himself is a tough but fair businessman who could be brutal, but ultimately is a hard
working American success story. McMahon takes advantage of this narrative loophole all the time. It makes it easier to distance himself from actual allegations of abuse behind the scenes. And because McMahon had more of a chokehold on the wrestling industry as the years went on, there's this feeling of Stockholm syndrome that haunts his legacy talent, like, well, he
had no choice but to be evil. This is from the recent Netflix docuseries Mister McMahons to Who, And the timing of this docuseries is pretty interesting on Netflix's part because they have an upcoming partnership with the WWE with plans to broadcast their weekly raw events starting next January. So there's this both siziness to the Netflix strategy, the feeling of let's call out and dismantle the ring master for decades of unsavory behavior before beginning to broadcast his products.
It's a pattern I've been noticing on that platform a lot recently. Another example is that Netflix recently broadcast a pretty broadly inaccurate Ryan Murphy mini series about the Menendez Brothers that drew a lot of criticism only to broadcast a new documentary from the perspective of the Menendez brothers in real life just a month later. So there's no consistent allyeship on a streamer. It's just asking the question, what will people watch? Okay, we'll broadcast it, but let's
return to Vince for now. But McMahon's defense against any of this, against a full blown sex trafficking scandal, against rape, against racism, against protective and shielding abusers on his staff is that people are only willing to believe these allegations because he plays a bad guy on TV.
A lot of people have confused through the years. Now who my charter was on television and who I am? He used to bug the hell out of me. I'm not that guy, They're realized. Doesn't matter what you want froms. It doesn't matter how you want to be perceived. It's the way you are being perceived. Your perception is reality.
And this worked for nearly half a century, but in a social media driven world where conversations around abuse and discrimination have now become more normalized, McMahon is a great example of how the ring master doesn't quite play in today's culture, and knowing the allegations against him and how he talks about it in this docuseries. Once you're accused of.
Rape, you're a rapist, but it was consensual and actually had it been a rape, the statue limitations everyone out fucking good.
Ring Master three. George Shay wasn't planning on getting into PR. He wanted to be a writer, but being a writer is not particularly profitable, and George Shay wanted money. And when you want to write and make money, the lessons of Barnum and McMahon would come in Handy. Just start a big show that crosses reality with real life and don't really worry about the collateral damage. That's the ring
master way. And Shay was mentored by one of the best, a guy named Morty Mattz, the now one hundred year old PR mogul, who is a massive New York advertising pioneer, including Ah. The point is emerging then Nathan's famous hot dog eating contest. Yes, it's a hot dog episode, and it's George Shay who is the indus suitable ring master of the professional hot dog eating world, at least at
the time of this recording. Because Morti Mattz came up with the Nathan's Famous hot Dog eating contest in the early nineteen seventies, coming in hot with the lie that this contest had been going on on the fourth of July every year since the nineteen tens, which is not true. The Nathan's contest was then what it is now an advertisement for Nathan's famous hot dogs, and while the hot dog eating contest was a fun thing known locally in the seventies into the late eighties, it wasn't anywhere near
the phenomenon it is now. In the early nineteen nineties, Mattz offloads the contest onto George Shay entirely, and Shay takes it extremely seriously. And what I think the contest does most successfully in these early years is further cement the iconography of the hot dog, the phallic tube meet with American patriotism. And that becomes very important here, because once he's brought into the fold in the nineteen nineties, George Shay casts himself as the MC in his Ringmaster
character at every event. In nineteen ninety seven, George and his brother Richard Shay founded Major League Eating, a professional organization that formalized eating as an American sport. And because they controlled the Nathan's Contest essentially gave the brothers a media monopoly for pro eaters in the US, and the contest grows in popularity and jingoism as the years go on.
Shay finds a character for himself that's somewhere between Barnum and McMahon, not afraid to antagonize on stage competitors or encourage rivalries, but also being overtly worshipful of his champions in a way that McMahon would never dream of. And while George has distanced himself from the pro wrestling comparisons, he has overt connections to the WWE. His wife worked
there as well as for some American soap operas. And so while it sounds unhinged that this would be how we're introducing hot dog eaters, I need you to listen to how George Shay brings out his champions. Here's how he brought out Joey Chestnut in twenty fourteen, And you've got to hand it to him.
Only moments from her womb, and before she even placed him to.
Her breast, his mother held him close.
And whispered in his ear.
She said, you are of my flesh, but you are not mine own fate is your father, and you belong to the people.
Oh no, and I've always of the far of July, of the Nation of the Free Zak.
The seven time Nathan's.
Famous champion of the Workous ladies and gentlemen love me here, my Jeyada.
Oh he is dude. Like it or not, It's effective and I like it. It makes sense in context once you understand a little bit more about the showmanship that comes with professional wrestling, and it's very entertaining. And after George takes over, Americans generally win the Nathan's Contest through the early to mid nineties with what are now considered to be amateur hot dog numbers nineteen twenty one pathetic.
But starting in nineteen ninety seven, something interesting happens. Japanese competitor Hirofumi Nakajima wins, a twenty two year old one hundred and thirty five pound competitor who stood in stark contrast to the huskier American competitors. And it's here when an international element is introduced in what's been marketed as the Ultimate American Contest, where the George Shay character really finds his voice.
See a lot of what I say is not literally true in terms of words, but it's emotionally true.
His angle, like mcmahonon Barnum, a lot of xenophobia, and this only escalates as Japanese competitors continue to flock to the Nathan's Contest into the new millennium. In Japan, televised professional eating was already very much a thing, and Shay, by his own account, both encouraged Japanese competitors to come to the US to compete and was xenophobic in the promotions leading up to it to stoke more American audience reaction.
This is from Nicole Lucas Hayms's twenty nineteen thirty for thirty called the Good, the Bad, the Hungry.
Everything was a self fulfilling prophecy. If we said, you know, there was a championship belt that was lost in Japan, there was right. If we said that we had a rivalry with the Japanese, we did. If we said there was a circuit of events, there was right, and everything sort of just came true.
But there was no Japanese competitor, no competitor globally. That made a bigger first impression on the Nathan's Contest than to Kiaro Kobyashi in two thousand and one. He was completely unknown to American audiences, but he was already a hugely successful eater and personality in Japan, and when he came to the Nathan's Contest, Kobe quite literally doubled the hot dog eating record of two thousand contest winner Kazutoyo Ara.
He ate fifty hot dogs in twelve minutes. It had never been done before, and while George Shay had been able to poke at his xenophobia angle while Americans were nipping at Japanese competitor's heels, Kobe changed the game entirely, and he won the Nathan's Contest back to back for
six years. And so Ring Master Shay spots an opportunity, one that feeds into the nationalism the contest is marketed on, and he sets out to find an American competitor to pit against kobea but none materialized right away, and in the meantime, Kobe became popular on American TV for his braggadocious persona and technique, really legitimizing eating as a strategic sport and not as she had positioned it in the past. As a sinful American gorging session, to which I say,
why not both? Right? Anyways, here's Kobayashi competing against a bear on Spike TV in the mid two thousands.
And now introducing to my right his opponent, the Beast. He descends from Kodiak Island, Alaska. Fully erect. This beast stands over eight feet tall and weighs in tonight at one thousand and eighty nine pounds.
There we go down.
Kobyashi must know that's it, this is going on, and that is it.
We have aware.
He is aware.
The Beast has one. When I tell you he was popular, I mean Spike TV. What a moment in time. And keep in mind Kobe is becoming famous alongside a huge reality television boom in the US, one that Major League Eating was eager to ride the wave of ESPN began broadcasting the contest in two thousand and four, at the same time that major reality franchises like Survivor, American Idol, The Apprentice, The Biggest Loser, The Amazing Race, and on and on and on. We're doing blockbuster runs and averaging
millions upon millions of viewers. Throughout the two thousands, the Chaise tried to ingratiate the mL and by extension, the success of Kobayashi into this reality TV environment, producing specials like the Saint Patrick's Stage Chowdown and the Turkey Bowl. This Kobe versus Bear moment was a part of a Fox reality show called Man Versus Beast in two thousand and three, and by the way, legend has it that
Kobe won during the dress rehearsal. No doubt that EML breaking into the mainstream was very well timed, because there was this huge interest in reality TV in the two thousands that only increased with events like the two thousand and seven Writers' strike hitting the scripted space with setbacks. And who happened to be watching Kobe v. Behar but the American competitor that George Shay had been waiting for one Joseph Chestnut. Also, his middle name is Christian, which
makes me laugh. Joseph Christian Chestnut. Here he is in the thirty for thirty.
It was so much easier for me to motivate myself when I thought Kobyashi was purely the enemy in my nemesis.
The ring master had found the rivalry that matched his vision, and now it was possible to position Kobayashi as the outsider and Joey as the scrappy American champion. And it's Shay who oversaw and actively fostered a hot dog feud that lives rent free in my mind until this day. The great view of Kobayashi Versus Chestnut, a narrative engineered by a character right on stage with them, a true American ringmaster, the grand narrative of Kobayashi Versus Chestnut. Your
sixteenth Minute starts now Joy Service sixteen sixteen. Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's characters of the day and see how their moment affected them and what that says about the Internet and us. And this week we are talking about my fucking Wheelhouse competitive hot dog eating. Yes, this is the second episode of sixteenth Minute about hot dogs. I
don't know what to tell you. This is my life, this is my passion, and they're not going to let me write a second book about it, no matter how many times I ask. And in case you're new here, I did actually write the first book about it. It's called Raw Dog The Naked Truth about hot Dogs, and
you can buy it wherever books are sold. But today we're going to be going over the famed rivalry of two the men who tend to become the main character on the fourth of July every calendar year, current hot Dog Eating Champion of the World Joey Chestnut and former hot dog Eating Champion of the World Takio Kobayashi. But unlike other episodes of this show, I'm not looking to talk to them, but the people who have shaped their story. If you're a fan of the contest, even casually, you
know about this feud. It's been going on for nearly twenty years, and Kobayashi's professional eating career in both Japan
and the States goes back even longer. But even if you're not a hot dog fan, you might have heard recently that these rivals went head to head live on Netflix this past Labor Day on September second, twenty twenty four in Las Vegas, and it was a big deal, not only because it had been nearly fifteen years since the two had competed and Kobayashi had all but left the sport in the US, but because for a long time they would have been contractually barred from doing a rematch.
This is because of how the contracts for Major League Eating were run. Joey was largely barred from participating in eating events that had not been approved by the organization in advance, and as Kobayashi was no longer a member of Major League Eating. More on that in a bit, this meant a rematch wouldn't be possible. But this past summer, Joey's contract with the MLEE was discontinued. We'll get into why, but essentially because he wanted to pursue business opportunities that
conflicted with Major League Eatings. Joey took a contract with Impossible Foods, a vegan brand and competitor of Nathan's famous, meaning that unless he dropped the deal, MLEE would drop him. Joey chose Impossible, and all of a sudden, the mL was out of the picture and left a clean path for the two rivals to finally rematch. And yes, of course I was there. We're going to release a minisode about what the Internet's reaction and interaction with it was
like this Thursday. But today we're gonna look at how this story evolved over twenty years, both online and in media, to yield a sports rivalry that McMahon or Barnum themselves would kill for. This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently, which you can probably tell from my bizarre over preparation to try to better understand P. T. Barnum and Vince McMahon before getting to George Shay and
before anyone sues me. They're all litigious. I'm not saying they are all the same guy, but they're cut from the same cloth, right. They're businessmen, they're hyper visible, and they're crafters of narrative that the general public can engage with as if it's true, or engage with as if it's fiction and still enjoy the product. But the product is other people. And as I thought about this, I felt like this same explanation could apply to a lot
of contemporary social media. Well, there's plenty of discourses and harassment campaigns led by modern ring masters your Ben Shapiro's, your Peers, Morgan'ses, all the way down to the drama YouTubers who pay their bills speculating about other niche celebrities
without really talking to anyone except Google AI. These days, the ring master is you guessed, it may be the algorithmth Internet algorithms, as we've discussed many, many times on this show, have become increasingly forceful drivers of who becomes a character of the day in the last ten to fifteen years, not just on our social media platforms, but on streaming platforms like Netflix, which broadcasted this rematch between
Joey and Kobe. So Yes, the rematch, titled Unfinished Beef Pretty Good, did allow for both Kobayashi and Chestnut more ostensible narrative controls than the way that they were presented by George Shay back in the day. But I don't think that there's a lack of a ring master here. At the Vegas event in September, while the thrill of the competition was the same, the vibe was different. The space that George Shay's voice would usually fill was replaced
with corporate synergy. So what does that difference look like? Well, to understand, we'll have to return to what the rivalry looked like under the steady control of a ring master to say for sure. So come with me if you will to the fourth of July two thousand and one, and just to reiterate, the majority of interview clips with Kobayashi, Chestnut and Shay are coming from today's guest, Nicole Lucas Haim's twenty nineteen documentary The Good, The Bad, the Hungry.
As we discussed, Kobe came to the States to compete in the Nathans Contest in two thousand and one, less than three months after the release.
Of Shrek Somebody and two months before nine to eleven, a fragile time, and while Kobe was not the first Japanese champion to take the contest by storm, he was in fact the third in a short amount of time.
He was by far the best competitor they'd ever seen. For context, the person who won the two thousand contest was victorious by three and an eighth hot dog, and Kobe won in two thousand and one by nineteen hot dogs. He could not be denied, and he was initially celebrated by the crowd.
A little kid is incredible for total beating of the Americans.
He was like a convey a belt. He was just putting them in two at a time.
But this wouldn't last. While xenophobic and often just boldly racist, it's not super surprising that a hyper American broadcast would be eager to turn on a Japanese competitor. You don't need me to tell you that relations between the US and Japan in the last one hundred years have not been great. If that's how we want to briefly summarize Americans dropping two atomic bombs onto Japanese cities in nineteen forty five and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in
the US back in nineteen forty one. How is Pearl Harbor coming up in my Hot Dog episode? It's far too complicated a dynamic to recap in detail here, but suffice it to say American media was no stranger to irrationally villainizing Japanese people, and doing so appealed to some inherent and lasting prejudice within a lot of Americans. And Kobe wasn't the only Asian competitor to be taking the
eating seed by storm. Longtime women's champion Sonya Thomas is a South Korean born American eater who was a longtime head to head competitor with Chestnut and Kobayashi, only to be sidelined in twenty eleven when George Shay decided to separate the contest by binary gender, announcing at the time.
I don't know that the thinking was parochial.
It was more imbrasive. You can read my book Broad Dog for more on that. Gender discrimination and professional eating is a whole other story. I have to stop myself. In The Good, The Bad, the Hungry, filmmaker Nicole Lucas Haymes does a terrific job of illustrating the cultural differences
between Joey and Kobe, mainly by interviewing their families. Joey was raised in a southern California middle class household with the American notion that food was comfort and commune, and Kobe was raised in Japan by a father who didn't approve of consuming food to access. As Kobe's father tells it, he really only grew to fully understand and support his son's career when he saw the level of care and
passion that Kobe had for it. There's also an inherent difference in Joey and Kobe's approach to competition as a concept. Kobe mentions towards the end of the documentary that he was raised with the notion that a competitor is to be respected and honored, while Joey's American mentality was more like this.
He can't just be that much better. There's a lot of nice road where I can't quite to sleep because I'm thinking about, well, why why can that Japanese man eat so much more than everybody else?
Add this to the frequent language barrier dissonance, and you get a narrative that's very malleable for George Shay, something that he certainly made Hay of at the peak of the rivalry. Joey and Kobe both admit that having such an intense competitor was deeply motivating, and Kobe's margin of victory grew slimmer, not just in hot dog victories but
across mL events throughout the mid two thousands. Joey finished third behind Sonya Thomas in two thousand and five nineteen hot dogs behind Kobe, only to surge ahead to losing by barely two hot dogs. Just the next year. He was nipping at Kobe's heels, and George Shay was not afraid to point it out, although at this time, to his credit, Shay does continue to give Kobe the worshipful intros that he's known for. Here's one of them.
The rules of the universe do not apply in the one hundred and forty four pounds that comprise Takiaro Kobiyanshi.
He is an.
Alchemist who has transformed athletics into mathematics, mathematics into poetry, and poetry into history.
I mean, it's just really good. But by two thousand and seven, as Joey continued to nip at his heels, Kobe hit an emotional wall after losing his mother to cancer. He originally stated that he would not be competing in the Nathan's Contest that year, but later reversed this decision, only to be beset by a jaw injury that George
Shay referred to as jaw thritis. And while Kobe says to this day that this injury was genuinely sustained while training and yeah, that makes total sense when your job is shoveling food into your mouth, the attitude of Joey and George at the time was, yeah, you're bullshitting man. You're just afraid that Joey's gonna beat you, which, by the time the documentary came out read as pretty insensitive.
But in two thousand and seven, Joey Chesnutt did beat Kobayashi, taking him down by three hot Dogs sixty six to sixty three. Kobe made headlines that year for eating his own vomit in the final seconds of the contest, which is don't look that clip up. And while the racial and xenophobic invocations toward Kobe certainly existed before two thousand and seven, there is a clear shift that takes place once he loses to an American. This is moments after
Joey Chestnut's first win. We have our confidence back.
The top days of the last six years are behind us.
And of course Kobayashi notices this shift too and is deeply freaked out and hurt by it. He says in the documentary Coodo.
I could feel the crowd becoming aggressive Tourny now god the most fast. I started to feel threatened that they might do something when I got off the stage, and we'll kind of up there. I didn't understand American culture quata, so it scared me.
And to be clear, Joey certainly is not innocent in all of this. Once he wins, he gets cocky and
antagonistic towards Kobe. But based on the footage that is included in Hams Is thirty for thirty, it's clear that George Shay is coaching both competitors to give answers to camera that will create the best promos closer to professional wrestlers than typical athletes, and in a clip that makes my blood boil, we hear George Shay play the character of George Shay describing the moment Kobe lost, then breaking character when the take is finished to reveal how he actually feels about it.
After that event, I went back to my room and I wept. I silently. He wept because something was lost. I wept.
And I really don't mean this with too much disrespect, because it's fine for some events to be fucking goofy, right. The problem was that the poking fund from the Shay side often seemed to be at their own champion's expense. Because I can attest in the twenty twenty four Netflix broadcast, reflects that both Kobe and Joey take eating very, very seriously. It is in no way a joke to them, just
in case there was any doubt. Once he begins losing, things get complicated in the negotiation of Kobe's contract within the mL Kobe wants to be able to compete in his home country and not require approval from the Shay Brothers to do anything, but the mL says no, and if Kobe didn't agree to the terms of his restrictive contract, he wouldn't be welcomed back on the Nathan stage to try and reclaim his title from Joey. So by the late two thousands, Kobe is put between a rock and
a hard place. Either he leaves opportunities and money that he'd worked for for years on the table, or he plays ball and continues to compete in the hot Dog contest for the next few years. Kobe tries to make this work as the chestnut rivalry seems to calcify into actual intense animosity between the two men after Kobe lost for a second time in an improvised overtime segment following a tie in two thousand and eight. By two thousand and nine, you see Joey and Kobe sitting beside each
other with their arms folded, refusing to speak. And keep in mind, this is as social media is just starting to take shape and Internet culture is taking off, so there's not yet a platform where you can properly live tweet, or start a full blown vendetta against a hot dog rival. It would have even been hard to watch the contest
at the time. ESPN didn't start broadcasting the event until two thousand and four, and that change had a lot to do with the hype around Kobayashi and anecdotally based on people in the competitive eating environment I've talked with, they genuinely fucking hated each other and while they didn't know it. In two thousand and nine, this would be the last time that the two appeared on the Nathan stage together, and Joey wins again, beating Kobe by a
four hot dog margin. And as the years go on and Joey wins more and more, Kobe is no longer being cheered by American audiences like he was at the beginning of the decade. He's being booed in a way that I can't help feel. Echoes the way xenophobic WWE villains were brought on then and now the way you hear the iron Chic was summoned to the ring at the peak of his heeled them.
Thank you very much, Jan Min and tell Jean Amarican and Teli jan Maamasiti all a maricha resting city people lot you always tells the hit or come to the Mayama.
The difference is Kobayashi is not playing a character in the way that WWE performers are. He's not playing an exaggerated cultural stereotype in a soap opera for boys. He's just trying to be himself and compete. In the documentary, Joey recalls this feeling of extreme jingoism as well.
America on the fourth of July. I think when Major le Gating made the headline of the contest of America versus Chapare, it hurt Kobyashi. It made him an enemy.
It might not surprise you to hear that George Shay does not like the way that he comes off in this thirty for thirty. Nicole and I talk about it in our interview, But that makes sense because he can't stop saying things like this.
I have always used pro American rhetoric, and the belt is a national prize from the day the Belt was made. You think I want Kobyashi to win six years in a row necessarily like if he wins, he wins, But that's not great for the narrative. The issue is, as someone who's competing this from an international basis, you have to understand that there's an American hero, and you can be a hero in the same exact way, but you can't be an American hero because you were an American.
So presenting this ringmaster mentality as a funny and cool thing while clearly not considering the pain that uplifting Joey was causing Kobe Yashi, who and I'm not entertaining other opinions on this, did make the Nathan's contest popular on a national scale single handedly. Without Kobe, there is no Joey Chestnut period, and to not just feel discarded but actively hated in the US after losing really affected Kobe. He says in the thirty for thirty.
Little Nathan st I was walking on the streets in New York. Makit passer by USA.
Let's see that was hurt for.
I felt unwelcomed. I was shocked.
I used to cheer for.
Me, didn't think kik and I started to feel I wasn't welcomed in America anymore.
Twenty ten is the last Straw, now deeply disillusioned with the mL and to some extent, America in general. Contract negotiations with Kobayashi fall apart for the final time, and he's barred from competing in the contest for good. But Kobe is a showman himself and always has been, and in protest shows up to the twenty ten contest in an iconic black T shirt with green text reading free Kobe.
And while accounts differ here as to why this happened, and Kobe hopped on stage during the contest to continue this protest, and here it's the final turn of the screw. Instead of engaging with the one time hot Dog hero, the mL sends security to arrest Kobe and there's a physical struggle to get him off the stage. I still can't kind of believe this happened. It's very cruel and uncomfortable to watch.
Six time winner Tekaru Tsunami Kobayashi was detained by police after storming the stage at the annual contest following a contractual dispute with organizers, and while Jaws relished his win, Kobayashi was charged with trespassing and resisting arrest.
And of course, the contest goes on and Joey wins again. And while there's plenty of fascinating hot dog drama, you can read a certain someone's book to learn more about the rivalry between Joey and Kobe falls off here for nearly fifteen years. Chestnut loses one to Matt Stoney in twenty fifteen, but outside of that has now won the contest sixteen times and by the time I saw him compete on the Nathan stage in twenty twenty three, because yes, I go every year and I refuse to be embarrassed
by it, Joey's only competitor is Joey. To his credit, in the last five years, Joey has appeared to reflect on this time in this rivalry a bit and has expressed regret at engaging with this xenophobic narrative as thoroughly as he did. But for Kobe this was too little, too late. The Shay Brothers invited him back, but Kobe
never accepted an invitation from the MLE again. In the meantime, Kobe and his manager slash wife Maggie James lived between Japan and the US, and Kobe did continue to eat and compete professionally, just not in the mL which still held a stranglehold on competition in the US. By the time Haines's thirty for thirty came out, the two hadn't competed against each other in nearly a decade, and said they wanted to record their segments separately so they wouldn't
have to spend time together. And it's here that George Shay's narrative power over to Kia Kobe Yashi in particular, comes to an end. I think this moment from Kobe, and the doc explains this most succinctly.
Amide As a Japanese, I wondered why Americans could not express themselves more constructive. I mean, in Japanese culture, we don't blue competitors, but it is not necessary to boo an opponent. Felni, But now I understand nice.
Email.
I see negative campaigns happening in American politics, that's the American way. You know, America now know that's not part of the cult.
And even though it's seed unlikely to happen in twenty nineteen, it stayed Nicole Lucas Haymes's dream and if rumors are to be believed, Joey's dream to one day hold a rematch between the two. But as long as Joey was with the mL, that was never going to happen. Until summer twenty twenty four, when Joey was released from his MLEE contract and barred from the Nathan's Contest in a way that was stunningly similar to how Kobe Yashi was
back in the day. He wanted to pursue more lucrative opportunities, and honestly, as I'm sure Joey knows, Joey was a bigger draw than the Nathan's Contest itself at that point, and so a decade and a half later, Joey and Kobe got to introduce themselves on the Netflix broadcast, tweak the rules of the contest to a place that was mutually agreeable, and have a final fight to the finish. But are they really in control of their own narratives now or are we creating this new, more opaque ringmaster.
When we come back, I talk with the director of The Good, The Bad, The Hungry and the executive producer of Unfinished Beef on Netflix, Nicole Lucas Hayms. Welcome back to sixteenth Minute. My name is Jamie Loftus, and of course I took all the notes for the episode you're listening to in a fuzzy pink notebook that says welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, What do you take me for?
And this week we're revisiting the narrative saga that surrounded to Karo Kobayashi and Joey Chestnuts very recently concluded Rivalry. And there's no one I'd rather speak to about this than Nicole Lucas Hayms, director of the now very sighted twenty nineteen thirty for thirty doc us mentory The Good, the Bad, the Hungry. It's a piece that was really influential on me while I was working on Raw Dog and clearly on the mL and Professional Hot Dog Eating Itself.
As we discussed in our interview, George Shay was said to be unhappy with his portrayal in the documentary, and after it's released, you can see a clear pullback from the broad nationalist narratives that used to define the contest in the twenty twenties. Shay has absolutely changed tack a little bit. And for the record, I did reach out to George Shay to do an interview for this episode and I didn't hear back, which honestly does not surprise me. If you've read my book, I'm very critical of him
and I probably wouldn't have answered my email either. So, without further ado, here is my interview with the lovely Nicole Lucas Hayms.
My name is Nicole Lucas Haymes and I am a documentary filmmaker.
This is like a dream interview. Now, over the course of half a decade, been telling stories about professional eaters and specifically these two professional eaters. What was it like returning to this rivalry years later?
So it's rare that has a long form journalist one has a chance to return to his stories so many years later. It was very interesting to me personally to see the changes that had happened in the ensuing years. There are personal changes from between Joey and Kobe. Joey really wanted to be the champion and worked very very hard for it.
So when we.
Filmed, which was twenty eighteen, it was relatively newer for him, so his legacy wasn't as cemented as it was in twenty twenty four, and then changed in the course of our production when.
Joey then oh and by the way, do you still have a crush on him?
And I have since met him and he was aware of it as herself.
But yeah, yeah, so Joey was more of a hothead, and I think he would read it that and made some temperate remarks about Kobyashi and I've really found a much more.
Mature individual six years later that in a short period of time he grew quite a bit. I think is striving to take a more elder statesman role, in addition to of course wanting to beat the pants out of Kobe and prove that he's the goat.
Kobe as she went through a really.
Interesting change that I wasn't really aware of because Kobe doesn't speak English very well, and so when we were talking long distance planning what became unfinished beef. This wasn't communicated to me until I really went to interview him, which was my second trip to Japan on this matter, and what I learned was that he had been very depressed. He had not competed during the pandemic, so he had been to see a monk who he solicited help from, who we met.
I love this guy. That material ended up not making it into the.
Broadcast satellite and bit by bit worked very hard to get over his depression because he was a competitor who wasn't competing. He needed it to have his life make sense. Joey had made some comment in the press about wanting to take on Kobe, and I had a bit of an aha moment, going, well, there's probably no one in the world who could do this except maybe me and maybe one or two other people, but yeah.
Mostly probably me.
So I reached out to Kobe via Maggie had asked if they were interested, and Kobe said yes, as long as they could compete by rules that Kobe felt were fair. So when Kobe knew that this contest was afoot and it was potentially possible, I think it helped him bit by bit come out.
Of the depression.
He was way more I think tender back in twenty eighteen when we were making the movie, because I don't think he had ever had an opportunity to fully tell his story. There was a lot of pain underneath it.
This time, while we were interviewing him, we had.
A bit of an AHA moment and said, I'm not crying and all of this this is in Joey's head. It was really kind of great to see that he had recovered from a dark knight of the soul and did so successfully.
I think to show up for this battle was fantastic.
It felt as if Joey and Kobe were more able to curate how they presented themselves versus in the Nathan's contest, were more common for someone to be presented to you.
I think that's true.
While I was the driving force, other people were hired to really execute the vision of the show. So the production company was den of thieves. And I would say it was fascinating to me to watch the care that they exhibited in helping Kobe and Joey have this be their event too. And of course I was part of it, but I'm a voice, but I'm not the driving force in making that broadcast passing.
Of the on.
There was a lot of discussion from their relatives, from each of their respective camps. We made the thirty for thirty, We try to get them together for a rematch with ESPN, and they would have nothing to do with it. Jenna Anthony commissioned The Good, The Bad, The Hungary thirty for thirty and she moved over to Netflix, and I knew that Jenna would be interested really quite an instrumental role in both of these hot Dog stories.
They grew and changes people. How did their attitude towards one another change?
Kobe's so careful about.
Culturally in Japan, it seemed to me, from what I can understand really as an outsider, that there's a culture of honoring one's opponent, so it's very rare when anyone would publicly bad mouth an opponent.
Though I understand that true.
Hard feelings from Kobe's point of view to Joey, and in turn Joey to Kobe. I think Joey would love nothing more than to continue to compete against Kobeyashi, and I really do believe that he is sincere and that that is his competitor of his lifetime. So I think some of his attempts to be nice are motivated with the possibility of a future relationship.
That's my opinion. Joey hasn't really said that.
That was my personal takeaway. But I don't really think Kobe wants to do this anymore. He's going to retire. I mean, look, never say never, but I think he's pretty clear that.
This was it.
Why was this the narrative that was so effective in the first place When you were approaching that and getting to know the competitors better, what was sticking out to you about what was appearing again? And again in these hot dog hero narratives.
I just recently said this to Jodie Walker and her piece, but truly mean this. I think George is a genius.
He knows how to.
Juxtapose the high and the low to make good fun. And he gets tone and and tone is a really hard thing to get right. I mean, when people create arts and there's participants in the movies, it's a holding a mirror. And I think George saw himself. My guess would be by seeing how it changed after the film. I think he recognized and maybe he had been unaware of what he really had been doing. Like who I mean, we end up sometimes making mistake in our own bubbles
and not even realizing. And so I noticed too that the nationalism was scaled back, that this was not anymore longer about sort of an American hero, but there is still a lot of American trappings.
I mean, it's July fourth.
He has pulled off this extraordinary coup of equating hot dog eating with patriots as a bund July fourth. Yeah, in everyone's mind in the country, it's challenging to dial back nationalism on July fourth. Kobe Ashi is also extremely charismatic.
As it wrought.
So Kobe had and has great personal style. Loved what he did. The world was his oyster.
He captured the American imagination in an extraordinary way, and he broke through the culture in the early ought that was phenomenal, and there was no.
Other character who was doing it.
I agree with you that without Kobe there would not have been a compelling main character.
I understood that I wanted to explore satiety.
But I didn't know at the beginning that it would become a reflection about America. And that was something that we really discovered along the way and really kind of deep into editing.
And we're Joey and Kobe happy with the way their stories were presented. I felt like, you're very empathetic and respectful towards both contestants.
I think they felt that.
I think that they each hid their grapes, which probably sure let me know that I was doing okay. Kobe wanted more granular information about why he was met at George. I think Joey felt a little that the film was more about Kobe than him. Besides these complaints, I think in general they felt that they were happy with it.
That they were captured.
I heard that Shay wasn't thrilled about his portrayal in the thirty for thirty And looking at other people of George Shay's ilk who are narrative creators, and you know, seeing the camera turned towards them, I feel like it almost always creates this tension because all of a sudden, this narrative that you have had deeply within your control for however many decades is being challenged in a way that wouldn't have previously been possible.
That's interesting.
You know.
When we started the film, George began doing sort of what he did in you know, Spinning, and was presenting himself as an entertaining character with sort of the tropes that have been in the press before. And I and we had to stop, and I said, George, for us to make this film, if we're going to make it, I need you to be you. We need the real story. And he agreed, You're right. He was not happy with his portrayal. And I also didn't know where it would
lead when we began. We went through I don't know thousands of hours of footage and really looked and we had to assess was Cobe accurate or was he not? You know, there was a journalistic piece to it in addition to character centered storytelling, and so I think the films for itself that it was never it was just sort of what we found, you know. He said that Joey's I think Joey broke his heart, and I think I said, no, I think maybe.
You broke his heart.
And that was not a planned I wanted to address it. And when he said it, that became a moment for me, you know, so he had an opportunity to reflect in that moment. I think he said that he wished Kobe had come to him. That's a hard thing to ask someone, right, who doesn't speak the language, she doesn't really understand the culture, who at that point was.
Mad, who was still kind of functioning as your employee at that point too.
Right at the thirty thousand foot level, right, the nature of human relationships is often rupture and repair. We all transgress and we all have to apologize and make up
for things we do. So so it's hard for an employee, someone who's a contract employee where you're the primary source of income, be able to communicate that, to know how to communicate it effectively when you don't speak the language, and I think that Kobe did not fully understand the nuance of George's language, so that if you read the words, or you have the words translated, he's an alchemist, or
he's a poet, He's this all of like those extraordinary things. Suddenly, if you don't know the language and understand the nuance, you have one idea of who you are, and George really had another idea of who Kobyashi was. And I don't think Kobe understood until the very end, ten years later, that George did not take this year as a sport and even his language wasn't was that superlative.
I could be wrong. I don't think he fully grasped that. I think not to say that he was duped.
I just think that coming from a culture so different than ours, I don't think he could get the nuance, especially as a non English speaker.
It also makes sense why Joey was so appealing, because Joey takes it super seriously.
Too, Like right, they both took it super seriously.
And I think Colbe understood that there was an element of fun and that people find fun.
And I mean, he's not a dope.
He's eating against a bear like that whole.
Yeah, he's a.
Very very smart He's a smart guy, So it's not a question of intellect. It was a question of I think of sophistication and attunement to American culture. And I think that's why the hurt was so bad too. When the xenophobic remarks started to come. I think it came out of the blue for him, like, why would anybody say anything mean to a guy who eats hot talks.
Which is a very fair question when George Shay was making those kinds of comments, and how permissible xenophobia was in the US in the two thousands, Let's just say, I guess it was like a particular kind of tone to it.
It had a particular tone, Yes, absolutely, like Post nine to eleven. It had a particular time. But I don't think our xenophobic nature has changed. I mean, look at the what's being said about the border. It's insane. Xenophobia absolutely continuing, and it has changed, it's probably.
Worse based on the years of reporting, of interviewing, of making media around this sport.
What is this a reflection of?
I can tell you this that I think that deep, deep that I don't know if it's an American narrative as much as it is a human narrative in the sense that every single culture has very strict mores around food, and you realize that there's a real joy in breaking all the rules around food, and there was a real joy about breaking rules around human capacity. We look at great athletes and we're in awe and there's something on inspired about how much these guys can eat, and also
the real pleasure of the rule breaking. I think there's something so naughty about it at its core. So I think that's part of the passion of hot dogs more so, I think than sort of the Americana identification, and I think that's an overlay, but I think it's audiness. Every culture also has food competitions, yeah, form or another, So I don't know that's what I think.
Thank you so much to Nicole Go stream thirty for thirty, The good, the bad, the hungry right fucking now. When it comes to the Netflix special surrounding Chestnut and Kobayashi, I have to admit, while it was thrilling to see the two matched up again after so long and genuinely devastating boiler alert, to watch Kobe Louse as his decades long supporters looked on, there was this feeling of corporatism
where sensationalism used to be. The hosts of the event, Rob Wriggle and Nikki Bella read the teleprompter and spoke to the viewers and their presence folk to clearly defined Netflix audiences, Briggle to their conservative fans and possibly some comedy nerds. Nicki Bella to the WWE contingency that they
were trying to court. It was an event unto itself and an ad for something else, the algorithm reminding you to come back soon, because remember, Netflix has a plan here, just as they released the Vince McMahon Takedown docuseries just a couple months before starting to broadcast WWE RAW. They're connecting the dots with the creative overlap between professional eating and professional wrestling and using the broadcast to promote their own product. That's why we have WWE star Nicki Bella
co hosting the event. That's why there are appearances from wrestler Ray Mysterio and he presents Joey with the championship belt. That's why they're broadcasting Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson on their platform. In November, even though their Vince McMahon docuseries criticizes McMahon for platforming Mike Tyson shortly after he was found guilty of raping a teenager in the nineties. Netflix is no better, but in a broader sense outside of the WWE. It's why Netflix is both sidesing the fucking
Menendez Brothers. It's a strategy one that doesn't require a visible ring master taking sides. It's a way to take any side that a viewer will pay to engage with. There are no values to an algorithm, even when the creatives and producers, and particularly Joey and Kobe are very, very passionate and smart about what they're doing. This isn't a criticism of the producers and the creatives on this broadcast at all. It's the algorithm that is powering it.
So is Netflix Synergy the pt Barnum of today, Not exactly, but I do think the algorithm that guides its programming, a guide clearly and logically follows in this broadcast is the new faithless ringmaster behind a lot of what we consume. Because at the end of the day, Barnum, McMahon and Shay deserve to be taken to task, and I'm grateful to live in a culture where that conversation can actually
be had. But they're fallible, fallible in a way that an opaque algorithm is not a face that needs to present you with the person to hate and not just wordlessly serve it in front of you. And if you're listening to this show, you're probably eating it right up with me. At the time of this recording, Joey Chestnut
is the world's champion eater. Takio Kobayashi broke his personal best score on the Netflix broadcast and remains the first eating celebrity who introduced the technique, the training, and the persona that has come to define American professional eating. And he's really and truly retired, and so the and narrative of Joey and Kobe Your sixteenth minute ends now. Thank
you so much for listening. Obviously, this topic is my absolute addiction, and I hope that this angle brought something new for you to hear more about my journey to Vegas to see Joey and Kobe face off one more time. Tune in Thursday for a minisode. And finally, here's a curse cameo. I ordered from George Shay in twenty twenty one, see you on Thursday, Ladies.
And gentlemen of America, citizens of the world, We now address Joey, a man of incredible strength, a warrior king who stands with a land meets the horizon.
Steadfast and unshakable, upon whose shoulders God has arranged the flesh of an archangel, a man of immense wisdom, who, while he is faced by a bunk and challenges, will stand on the ramparts of victory, overlooking a sea of truth.
Because he will never stop, and he will never stand down.
And he will never submit, and he will never surrender until his bones are cracked and splintered and scrape like chalk on pavement, until the very dome of Heaven collapses and the black avalanche of space pours down around us. He will fight on why Because the rock on which he stands is not a rock. It is the United States of America.
And now it is go time.
It is go time.
Time, it is go no go, Lock and load and love him and leave him smoking. If you got them, see you want to see us seeing on the either side time time this condition red all hands on deck, batten down the hatches, belly up to the bar, do it too It feel the burn fire and the whole.
Hold the phone, Go big or go home.
Game on game day, game face. Never say never, Never say die, Never give up, Put up a shut up, shape up a ship out, show me the money, make my day.
Good night.
We wake me when it's over.
It's go time.
Homer from Jamie.
Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and iHeart Radio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. Themes and Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant Crater and Head. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee and Casper and my pet Rockberg who'll outli of us all Bye