Ryan Nerz - Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit

J ANUARY 30, 2004
P HILADELPHIA , P ENNSYLVANIA

Its 4:00 A.M. , pitch-black and frigid out. The only people left on the roads are truck drivers, cabbies, and those with suspicious motives. Even the partyers have grabbed their last Philly cheesesteaks and headed home. And yet the parking lot outside the Wachovia Center is jam-packed. Hordes of young men in hooded sweatshirts and stocking caps are raising plastic cups into the air, woo-hoo-ing and cackling like madmen. They gather in clumps around cars and bonfires, chanting and dancing and drinking, always drinking. Theres one on top of a truck, ripping off his shirt. Theres one tossing a full beer into a fire. Over there, between those carstheres one pissing on a tire.

A Jeep full of teenage girls drives by and is instantly besieged by rabid, dead-eyed guys on all sides. Most of them are wearing green jerseys, so it looks like the formation of an organized mob. Hard rock musican anthem for mayhemblares from someones car, and one begins to wonder whether theres something more than beer in all those plastic cups.

What the hell is going on? Who is running the show, and at what point should the riot police be called in? Why are all these people here? The answer comes in the form of a rebel yell, performed spontaneously by three sloshed revelers. Wing Bowl! Wing Bowl! Wing Bowl!

Meanwhile, at the arenas back gate, nine workers start unloading nearly seven thousand chicken wings from a fleet of trucks. As 4:30 A.M. approaches, the masses begin to migrate. A line has formed, beginning at the arenas entrance and slithering around the perimeter of the parking lot like a snake. At 5:30, the doors open. People squeeze through the turnstiles and sprint into the arena. With free admission and minimal door security, the entrance vomits forth a steady stream of humanity.

Once inside, the meaning behind the hysteria doesnt immediately reveal itself. The infield is a hockey rink without the ice, Plexiglas boards separating fans from whatever show awaits. Twenty thousand people are hurrying to get the best seats. A row of empty tables faces a host of reporters and bystanders, but nothing is happening. The few dozen young ladies prancing about onstage, half-dressed in outfits that dont much test the imagination, are the only evidence of things to come.

At 7:20 A.M. , the show finally starts. A man wearing a vest and some undies, flanked by two curvaceous coeds and holding a caged live chicken, enters the stadium and does a lap around the circular promenade. Then an odd procession beginswhat cynics might call a parade of freaks. The central characters have names like Totally Apauling and Wingo Starr. They are surrounded by entourages packed with friends and scantily clad dames called Wingettesa nice way of saying strippers. Each characters approach has a concept behind it, the depths of which vary greatly.

Dan the Cop, who qualified for the contest by eating fourteen hundred cheese balls, pushes a wheelbarrow filled with giant cheese balls, two of which hang from his groin. His T-shirt reads EAT THESE . Johnny Huevos makes a grand entrance in his Lord of the Wings outfit. A hole in the suit shows off his hairy paunch, a sight that can only be described as unpleasant. A rubber chicken dangles just out of the reach of Chitlins Chuck, who is held back by a half dozen ropes. The aptly named Dough Boy, a 390-pound ball of pudge, comes out with his hands pressed together in prayer, dressed like Friar Tuck. An emcee explains that this is his last Wing Bowl because afterward hes getting gastric bypass surgery. So in honor of the fact that this is technically his last meal, she says, he is coming in as the Last Supper.

The eater known as Coondog enters the arena entourageless, wearing a smug smile, a Mohawk, and a Green Bay Packers jersey. With a jolt, he lifts a pair of signs that show the score of the Philadelphia Eagles recent loss to the Panthers in the NFC Championship game. The shower of cups and cans is so violent that hes forced to cower next to the Plexiglas in the fetal position. Apparently prepared for the assault, Coondog uses his signs as shields. Dear Lord . Whatever happened to the city of brotherly love?

The reception of the New York eaters, as theyre contemptuously called, isnt much warmer. Their approach is decidedly different from that of the other eaters. They seem to be a team, and they dont have concepts. They do, however, wear the same navy blue T-shirts, each one emblazoned with an obscure combination of letters: IFOCE . One of them, an enormous black man with a boyish smile, named Badlands, grabs the microphone and dedicates a rap to the crowd. His lyrics are drowned out by boos. The last and most noteworthy of the IFOCE eaters is a hundred-pound Asian woman named the Black Widow, whos wearing lavender eye shadow and a black boa around her neck. Contradicting her nickname, she smiles and waves at the crowd as if this were a bake sale.

A competitive eater, his cheeks stained by wing sauce and lipstick, chews while being cheered on by an entourage of Wingettes.

When the Rocky theme starts playing, the mood suddenly shifts. Before the announcer even utters a word, fans stand up and lift their cups in homage. One of the all-time best, says the announcer. Our reigning champion, at 314 pounds, from Woodbury Heights, New Jersey, at two-to-one odds, its El Wingador! The place goes bananas, but the entourage is so massive its hard to see whom all the ruckus is for. Finally, a man in a white satin boxers robe emerges from the tunnel. The roar from the crowd is so epic, the emotion so pure, you wouldve thought Rocky Balboa himself had just entered the building. A truck driver by profession, El Wingador is a demigod here, worshiped like a hybrid of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the heavyweight champion of the world.

8:00 A.M. Time for the main event. As Wingettes start setting paper plates stacked high with wings before their assigned contestants, two blond dominatrices pose for pictures with a man in a chicken mascot costume. A stirring rendition of God Bless America is sung. Bathing in a shower of confetti, one dominatrix climbs a ladder and tosses an egg to the arena floor. Splat. Threetwoone! And theyre off.

At first, the actual eating contest seems somewhat anticlimactic for the wasted crowd. Because the competition takes place between plate and mouth, the masses depend on the JumboTron to see whats going on. The images on the giant screen are arrestinglarge men eating chicken as fast as they can, surrounded by bare midriffs, hot shorts, and fake breasts. But attention spans being what they are, the crowd soon starts watching itself. A fight breaks out and people swarm toward it, standing on their seats for a better look. Every few minutes some anonymous booze-soaked woman gets up on someone shoulders and shows off her tits for several thousand leering men. The crowds attention is briefly recaptured by the halftime show, which consists of two men crushing a twelve-pack of beer cans against their foreheads until they are ribboned with bloody, beer-drenched cuts.

What is this? Whats happening here? To call it a wing-eating competition is in no way satisfying. Its a cultural dramedy of some sort, but celebrating what? Its origins shed a little light on the subject. Wing Bowl began in 1991 as a publicity stunt, the brainchild of Al Morganti and Angelo Cataldi, on-air personalities at the WIP Morning Show , a popular radio sports show in Philadelphia. In the early nineties, as the Super Bowl approached each January, Philadelphia Eagles fans found themselves left out. To simultaneously lift the community spirit and mock the Buffalo Bills fans who kept cheering their team to annual Super Bowl losses, the WIP crew decided to do what they do bestmock them. Stealing Buffalos signature foodstuff, the buffalo wing, and borrowing heavily from professional wrestling, they created a cultural event that, while undeniably American, defies explanation.