Why Is The Top Dog Missing At This Year's Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest?

If the Fourth of July means a day at Coney Island, then that probably means you’ll catch the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, which also means you’d see perennial favorite Joey Chestnut inhaling several dozen hot dogs in about ten minutes. This year, however, Chestnut has been banned from the competition, as he recently signed a deal with a vegan hot dog company. This has created a big beef between the sixteen-time winner of the mustard yellow belt and Major League Eating, the professional eating circuit that produces the spectacle.

George Shea is one of the co-founders of Major League Eating and serves as the emcee for the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. He appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to discuss why Chestnut’s deal doesn’t cut the mustard with MLE.

“We’re not going to stand in the way of making him money, so we sort of said that’s okay,” Shea frankly explained to Berman and Riedel. “But then they hit us with the fact that he had already signed an agreement to represent a rival hot dog brand, which just creates a real conflict. So, you know, he’s the Nathan’s champion, and two days later he’s going, ‘These are the hot dogs I love,’ or something, you know. So, it’s a problem, and we tried to work that out and have him carve out hot dogs, but they didn’t want to do that, and so then we have this issue we’re facing right now.”

Shea doesn’t relish the fight with his top dog, but he is adamant there can only be one weiner standing in a few weeks. “We are 100% disposed to resolve this and have him there on the Fourth of July… but I will say this- to me, I think there’s a way to get it done, but it’s very hard to have a rival brand pop in and give some money to one of the eating stars and then pull all the press away from the contest, or a lot of it. You know what I mean; that’s the fundamental problem.”

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