July 4 Grossout (Hot Dog Eating Contest)

Ali vs. Frazier, Bird vs. Magic, Yankees vs. Red Sox rivalries that have lived in sports enfamy. On July 4, another rivalry came into fruition, Joey Chestnut vs. Kobayashi, the field, professional eating.

I am just going to go on record and say competitive eating is not a sport. I will admit it's amazing to see such scrawny individuals pound hundreds of hot dogs, pizzas, eggs. etc, and not even twitch but like many people say professional wrestlers are not athletes (on this I say differently), there's no way these guys can be considered athletes, sure there are sports aspects to these contests like the Mustard Belt (a literally mustard colored title belt) or several of the athletes participating in face paint or costumes, but it's just not a sport, it's in the same non sports category as the Scrabble Championships or the Spelling Bee.

I miss back in the day, when ESPN covered sports and only sports. But now, it as worse as MTV who forgot what their station was based on music.

Anyway, this year's event was interesting to watch, how Chestnut and Kobayashi finished off 59 hot dogs in 10 minutes and had to finish off five more hot dogs before a winner was decided. In the end, Chestnut won his second Mustard belt.

As cool as this is, it's just not sports, a spectacle but not sports.

"Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town."--George Carlin