By Mike Morsch, Executive Editor
Let’s get ready to have the stomachs grummmmmmmble!
It was a heavyweight championship bout: the top-ranked eater in the world, Joey Chestnut, against the young upstart from East Windsor, Carmen “The Mutiny” Cincotti, currently ranked fourth by Major League Eating, the organization that sanctions these types of events.
The tale of the tape: The Trenton Thunder World Famous Case’s Pork Roll Eating Championship Sept. 24 at Arm & Hammer Park in Trenton.
But in the end, the champ proved to be too much. The Mutiny came up three pork roll sandwiches short. The judges’ scorecards had Mr. Chestnut downing 43 pork roll sandwiches with Mr. Cincotti right on his heels consuming 40 pork roll sandwiches. The third place finisher ate only 31 pork roll sandwiches, so it was a two-man bout from the get-go.
No, there would be no mutinous uprising on this night in this place. Mr. Chestnut retains the belt. For now.
“It was a tough battle for sure. And in the end, he came out on top,” said Mr. Cincotti, who when he’s not competitively eating is an architect in East Windsor. Mr. Cincotti had said prior to the eating contest that his goal was to consume 40 pork roll sandwiches, dunked in water to soften up the food and make it go down more easily, in the 10-minute time-limit contest.
He met that goal, but it wasn’t enough to unseat the top dog.
“I thought I had a little bit left in the tank. There’s a lot of strategy involved. You can’t run out of the gates and eat as fast as you can. If you use too much water, you fill up quick,” said Mr. Cincotti. “My strategy going into it was to eat a little bit less water at the beginning and hopefully finish stronger. I guess I was playing too conservatively.”
Mr. Cincotti said that he and Mr. Chestnut have a friendly rivalry, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some trash talking, before and after a contest.
“When the competition was over, he turned to me and said, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t beat me because I wasn’t prepared for this at all.’ It was said as kind of a joke,” said Mr. Cincotti with the knowledge that Mr. Chestnut is the champ because he’s always prepared for an eating competition. “And afterwards, knowing that I had just eaten 40 pork roll sandwiches, he picked me up and started throwing me around like a rag doll. I said, ‘You gotta stop doing that, man.’ ”
Mr. Chestnut took home the top prize money with $2,000 while Mr. Cincotti pocketed the runner-up prize of $1,000.
“That’s a pretty good payday for 10 minutes of work,” said Mr. Cincotti. Mr. Cincotti will continue to train and compete in eating contests. And he doesn’t have much time to prepare for the next set of events. He’s in Toronto Saturday for a poutine-eating competition and leaves immediately after that for Sacramento, California, for a pumpkin pie-eating contest on Sunday.
“Poutine is wildly popular in Canada, but around here, nobody has really heard of it,” said Mr. Cincotti. “It’s French fries with gravy and cheese curds on top. I personally have never had it, but everyone on the (professional eating) circuit talks highly of it.”
As for altering his training routine in the lead-up to the next events, Mr. Cincotti isn’t inclined to change things up on such short rest.
Maybe.
“I think I might sit down and see how many slices of pumpkin pie I can eat and then maybe one day I’ll cook up some French fries and pour some gravy on top. See what I can do,” he said.
