Singapore - Champion eaters from the United States and Japan will take on a Singaporean gobbler during a food festival, organizers said Wednesday. Joey Chestnut, the 24-year-old top-rated Major League Eating competitor, is the ranking champion. He beat rival Takeru Kobayashi, 30, at an annual hotdog-consuming competition in the US, ending Kobayashi's six-year reign.
Eating competitions are rare in the city-state, where a 20-year-old man died in 1989 after choking while participating in a moon cake eating contest.
Major League Eating is a US sports franchise that oversees professional competitive eating events.
Thinking Tub, a Singaporean-owned new media company, has bought in the franchise for Asia and the Middle East and is organizing the event in the city-state, a highlight of a month-long food festival kicking off Friday.
The competitors will gorge themselves on Singaporean snacks on July 27.
"The event is a mix between a reality show and a spectator sport," said Hairi Soewarso, co-founder of Thinking Tub.
The Singaporean who emerges the victor of a local competition over the next two weeks will compete against Chestnut and Kobayashi.
