It’s Weiner-Takes-All!
It’s wiener-takes-all as HyperX Arena in Las Vegas plays host to Netflix’s strangest live event, a hotdog eating contest. And this basically amounts to stuffing as many wieners into your mouth as possible (quieten down at the back).
American actor and comedian Rob Riggle is joined by WWE hall of famer Nikki Garcia as they narrate all the action, With 300 hotdogs prepared and 100 grand on the line, there’s plenty on the table for this bitter rivalry to take shape.
The little “tale of the tape” segment leans into the idea of this being a huge sporting contest, and to pad out the runtime, we also get some “preliminary” eating competitions prior to the main event. With an audience of rowdy Americans, plenty of American cameos and filmed entirely in America, this is a very US-centric competition.
All of this works to prop up the foundation of this big rivalry between Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi. This bitter contest goes back to 2007 and since then, this contest has been 15 years in the making, it’s certainly not for the fainthearted.
In essence, the special is a whole lot of padding and easily could have been condensed down. I’m not quite sure whose idea it was to make this 1 hour 15 minutes, but given it takes 45 minutes to even get to the main event, this live event would have benefited tremendously from some tighter editing, and more urgency to the run-time.
To be fair, the main event is pretty good although it would have been nice to actually have some thoughts from the competitor who finished as runner-up. It’s a minor gripe but does feel a bit disingenuous not to include that.
However, if you’re down for some crazy eating competitions, Chestnut VS Kobayashi isn’t bad. It’s massively padded out so if you’re watching the re-run, do be prepared to fast forward a lot of waffle (no, those aren’t eaten here) to get to the main event.
The show is very American-centric too, right down to the “USA” chants and the cameos that pop up in this special as well. If you can get past all of that, this is a decent live event and another tasty step forward for Netflix trying their hand at new and interesting dishes.
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Verdict - 6/10
6/10