Why The Bachelorette is like a Hot Dog Eating Contest

Over the weekend we noticed another nationally televised competition that is quite similar to The Bachelorette.  The 96^th Annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest held on July 4^th at Coney Island. The contest pits professional eaters against one another to consume as many hot dogs as they can in 10 minutes. The winner (who typically eats more than 60 hot dogs during the period) gets a mustard colored champion belt and $20,000.

While downing 60 greasy hot dogs and courting Ashley Herbert evoke similar feelings (both are likely to make you nauseous), we actually wanted to point out another similarity between the eating contest and the Bachelorette. This year Joey “Jaws” Chestnut won the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest after consuming 62 hot dogs in 10 minutes. The event played on ESPN and on televisions around the nation. But a much lesser publicized event was happening in the same city at the same time. Seven-time Champion and world record holder for eating hot dogs (among other things) Takeru “Tsunami” Kobayashi held an event on a roof top where he consumed 69 hotdogs in 10 minutes smashing Chestnut’s record. Consuming 7 more hotdogs is the eating contest equivalent of Kobayashi lapping Joey. Kobayashi was banned from the competition because he wouldn’t sign an exclusive contract with Major League Eating (yes, seriously, there is an organization trying to make eating a professional sport that wants to charge “athletes”). So Chestnut was crowned the wiener on national television by MLE president George Shea who would later call Kobayashi’s record a farce.

So what does this have to do with The Bachelorette? Just as the Nathan’s eating contest wants to find the greatest hot dog eater, The Bachelorette purports to find the best love match for Ashley. But both contests also want to make as much money as possible. So they end of squeezing more money out of the show and their contestants at the expense of “REALITY.” When Bentley was cast, Bachelorette producers were ecstatic about the ratings that would come from Bentley’s brutal honesty just as the Nathan’s contest organizers were ecstatic to have the iconic Kobyashi as their original hot dog eating champion. Yet Kobayashi and Bentley refused to play the game their handlers wanted them to play, and both of them walked. Now their respective contests are stuck trying to be the premier event while the champions sit on the sidelines. So who is the Joey Chestnut to the Bentley Kobayashi?

SPOILER ALERT (We think it’s a spoiler, but we don’t know for sure. Bentley fans believe it’s obvious given the Bentley rebound Ashley is on. Also, does it really matter to alert you when Bentley is gone?).

From what we understand, it’s the same guy who caught Ashley first off of the Bentley rebound (which she is still experiencing) – J.P. After seeing how hard Ashley fell for Bentley, it’s obvious that the love she feels for J.P. is a direct result of the Bentley rebound. At the end of the day, Joey and J.P. might get the coveted yellow belt and be crowned wieners on national television, those familiar with reality know who the real champions are: Bentley Williams and Takeru Kobayashi.

Before you make comments on this page, we want to identify that there are graphic analogies that could easily be made with a contest of consuming multiple wieners and the set up to The Bachelorette show—but we want to keep this site family friendly.