Takeru Kobayashi Addresses His Decision To Come Out Of Retirement For ‘Unfinished Beef’: “I Am Grateful”

Joey Chestnut may be the darling of competitive eating, but his Unfinished Beef rival Takeru Kobayashi will go down in history as the “godfather” of the sport.

The competitive eating pioneer made his name in Japan before he first competed in Nathan’s Coney Island hot dog eating contest in 2001, where he set the new world record by eating 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes. The eater shot to fame after that fateful day and he became a six-time champion of the annual hot dog-eating contest. That is, until Joey Chestnut bested him in 2007 by just three hot dogs.

Thus began a longstanding rivalry that was captured in the 2019 documentary 30 for 30: The Good, The Bad, The Hungry. But Kobayashi famously retired from the game in TKTK in the Netflix documentary Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut, where the 46-year-old learned his career caused lasting damage to his nervous system. Now, the legend is back for one last match with his one true rival in Netflix’s live hot dog-eating competition, airing Monday, Sept. 2 at 3 p.m. ET.

“But this is not just any match, this is a match with my rival. I felt like I really needed to turn myself around and really get into it,” he said at the press conference and weigh-in before the competition. He later admitted that he felt “nervous just being here.”

“Many athletes, after their peak, they quietly retire and without really being seen. And many maybe don’t even make it to the Olympics… but in my case, I have this big chance now and winning in this match would make me number one in the world,” he said. “So it’s a fantastic stage, and I think that’s thanks to the fact that we have this rival relationship. For that part, for the fact that we are rivals, I am grateful.”

Now, Chestnut and Kobayashi will share a stage again for the first time since 2009, where the world’s ultimate competitive eater will be decided once and for all.

DECIDER spoke to Kobayashi ahead of the Unfinished Beef competition to discuss his longstanding rivalry against Chestnut and his decision to return to the sport one last time.

DECIDER: Do you eat hot dogs for fun anymore, or is it something that you only do professionally for work?

TAKERU KOBAYASHI: Not lately, and especially for the last six months or so, getting ready for this, I haven’t been enjoying eating hot dogs, but aside from when I’m getting ready, I do eat hot dogs just for enjoyment.

How does it feel to be competing against Joey Chestnut tomorrow for the first time in 15 years?

I feel a little odd, because this is an old rival I haven’t seen for many years, and it’s kind of like, how did destiny bring us together again in this way? We have gone on different paths in the last 15 years. I didn’t like the contract that I had with Nathan’s and so I left, and then he stayed, and now, 15 years later, here we are, our paths are crossing again. So it’s a very interesting situation.

Can you discuss your decision to retire from competitive eating and your decision to come back? Would you have come back to competitive eating if you weren’t competing against Joey?

I think for five years I haven’t competed so my motivation was really declining. I had a chance to think a lot about myself and my life, and I thought to myself, well, I’m probably going to sort of disappear from this scene without any retirement competition or anything. But here we are with this one big chance. If it was just a retirement competition that Netflix brought to me, I probably would have just said, ‘Nah, I’ll pass.’ But because it’s with my rival, Joey Chestnut there’s a point to this. And so the two things being Netflix live broadcasting this all over the world, and it being against my rival, is what really convinced me to come back and compete in this way.

I know you have some signature moves that you use like the Kobayashi shake and things like that. Do you think you’re going to be using that during the competition or anything else like that?

I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow on on stage. I don’t know how I’m going to feel. And, you know, the big question for me is, am I going to have the mental space to actually do that kind of stuff up there? So, I hope so.

You currently hold 10 world records right now. What was the hardest world record to achieve?

What do I have again? I forget. Tacos, 159 tacos in 10 minutes. I think that was the hardest. The minced chicken is like really dry, and so that is hard to swallow because it gets stuck.

Are you streaming or watching anything right now that you’re enjoying?

[Kobayashi’s wife, Maggie James, is] saying Sex Education. That’s old. That’s not a recent one. I like it a lot, but it’s a little while ago.

When I was a kid, I used to watch The Wonder Years, and that’s how I learned like American culture. I love the music in the show. It makes you laugh, it moves you. And every episode is different. And now there’s the new version on Netflix.

Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef streams live on Netflix Sept. 2 at 3/2C.