With both the intent of being a nice guy and also attempting to eliminate some competition. I informed some of the competitors that might travel from a distance, that their shot at $500 decreased dramatically with this new rule.Since myself and Joel lived less than an hour away, we decided to make the trip anyway. Pat Philbin also showed up as the contest was right in his backyard in New Jersey. Good old Joe Menchetti still figured he could weasel his way into a slot and showed up as well. I found out that it would not be as simple as Joe might have thought.
I signed up for the contest and met up with the rest of the eaters. Joel and I struck up a deal where we would split the money should one, or both of us be selected for the contest. This way at least we would both walk away with some cash. Then a light bulb flashed. I thought it might be a good idea to enter my girlfriend Michele's name into the drawing. If she were selected, I would say she didn't want to compete and ask to take her spot. The people running the contest told me that if she chose not to compete a new name would be drawn. At that point, I figured if she was selected and none of the other pros were, then she would have a shot at winning some money since everyone in would be an amateur.
The names were drawn and as it turns out, her name was the first one called, as she jokingly predicted when I signed her up. We listened to the other names with intent, but Joe, Pat and I were not selected. Joel, however, was. He was a little out of practice as he had only competed once in the last 4 months and was being more selective with contests since he was beginning to lose weight, I felt confident about our chances. My girlfriend, on the other hand, had no idea what she was getting into.
The contestants were seated and I stood in front of Michele to cheer her on while Joel was in my corner eye view, but the way the stage was set up, you could really only focus on about 4 of the contestants, so I couldn't exactly see how he was doing aside from the back of the number counting sheets the judges held up.
While my girlfriend says she was eating the corn pretty fast, she really looked like she was just having some corn with a meal. It was kind of cute, but I knew that she didn't have a chance after the first cob. She wound up finishing with three. When the final bell rang after the three minutes, a winner was announced with ten eaten while Joel wound up tying two other contestants with six. He was initially credited with seven, which would have been good for 2nd place, however one was taken off for some reason. To be truthful, after watching the video below, I definitely do not think this guy ate clean and should have had some of his cobs thrown back, as they promised they would do if it was not 90% clean.
The remaining three eaters entered an eat off and again, the count was screwy as Joel and another guy ate 4 cobs and they picked up one of each contestants cobs and said "he did 3.5 and he did 3.25". While, at the very least, they should have went to another eat off for 2nd place.
Wacky judging is always to be expected in a contest like this, my only regret is not being able to get up there and have a shot at winning it all.
Here is the contest report, which actually wound up almost being a profile for Joel and his weight loss...
I checked out the video above and I did notice that the judges actually did give the contestant about 3 cobs back and he cleaned them up and gave them back.
ReplyDelete