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James Webb · On with Mario Interviews

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  Speaker 1: You're on with Mario a little.
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  Speaker 2: Bit tebro Marriol Lopez joining me right now in Zoom,
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  Speaker 2: Australia's top ranked competitive eater, number four ranked in the
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  Speaker 2: entire world.
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  Speaker 3: Mister James Webb, how are you, James?
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  Speaker 1: Good? Thanks?
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  Speaker 3: How are you do? I'm well, nice to speak with you.
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  Speaker 2: I always I'm always fascinated with competitive eaters and how
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  Speaker 2: thin they are. Like, you're a thin individual. You know,
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  Speaker 2: one would think you get into competitive eating you'd be
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  Speaker 2: a chubby guy or a big, big guy. But that
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  Speaker 2: is not the case. How does a person get into
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  Speaker 2: competitive eating? And when did you know you had the skill?
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  Speaker 3: Well, firstly, I appreciate that.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you. Tell us my wife she married a bodyboita.
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  Speaker 1: Now she's got this, so I appreciate. I guess Look,
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  Speaker 1: how I started in competitive eating was a little bit
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  Speaker 1: of a joke. Actually, I went for lunch with my
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  Speaker 1: with my girlfriend who's now my wife. Obviously, we went
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  Speaker 1: to a pub in a rural kind of little little
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  Speaker 1: town on the way to a very famous wine tour,
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  Speaker 1: and my wife bribed me with like a food eating
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  Speaker 1: day out. Anyway, get to this pub. They have a
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  Speaker 1: food challenge and the owner of the pub in this
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  Speaker 1: little country town. I think he had a couple of
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  Speaker 1: beers with lunch, and he was a bit a little
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  Speaker 1: bit tipsy, and he was like running his mouth a
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  Speaker 1: little bit about this undefeated food challenge and it's so
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  Speaker 1: big and this and that. I'm like, I'll try it,
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  Speaker 1: like whatever, you know, anyway, I hate this bigger in
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  Speaker 1: like twenty three minutes, and it was it was ten pounds,
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  Speaker 1: so it was pretty big. But I never realized what
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  Speaker 1: competitive eating was.
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  Speaker 3: Until that day.
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  Speaker 1: And then like I started getting messages from people saying, hey, man,
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  Speaker 1: like competitive eating, like you're.
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  Speaker 4: So good at this.
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  Speaker 3: I'm like, what the hell is this?
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  Speaker 1: Like what have I done? And oh yeah, it kind
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  Speaker 1: of changed my life.
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  Speaker 2: So wasn't anything you necessarily trained for or it's not
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  Speaker 2: a particular skill set.
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  Speaker 3: You just either have a big appetit or you don't, Right.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. And I think as well, like
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  Speaker 1: I love food like I love to eat, like saying
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  Speaker 1: I love to eat like I was a fat kid growing.
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  Speaker 4: Up, so you know, I never realized.
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  Speaker 1: I never actually sat at the table and realized, hey,
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  Speaker 1: I'm eating this much and you're eating this much. I
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  Speaker 1: kind of just ate, you know what, I mean so
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  Speaker 1: competitive eating when you look at it, Yeah, Like I'm
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  Speaker 1: a big eater. I've got a big appetite. And the
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  Speaker 1: other side of it is it's like a sport, right
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  Speaker 1: Like you can train, Like if you're a football player,
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  Speaker 1: you train to be a better football player. You go
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  Speaker 1: to the gym to lift more weights, to get bigger muscles,
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  Speaker 1: et cetera. Yeah, I literally I train, I eat more food,
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  Speaker 1: to eat more food.
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  Speaker 2: So I'm fascinated by this because I'm a pretty big
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  Speaker 2: eater myself. I always say pound for pound, I'm not
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  Speaker 2: a pro or anything, but pound for pound I think
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  Speaker 2: I can pretty much. And I've had large individuals also
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  Speaker 2: tell me, you eat more than anybody I've ever seen.
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  Speaker 3: And not by design. I just I just happened to
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  Speaker 3: eat a lot.
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  Speaker 2: Now, is there is when you I guess I'm trying
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  Speaker 2: to say, when you know you have a competition and
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  Speaker 2: do you starve yourself? Is that how it works or
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  Speaker 2: what's the.
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  Speaker 3: Approach to it?
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  Speaker 4: You know what I mean.
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  Speaker 2: It's a bit about your stomach and now you're at
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  Speaker 2: it and now it's a disadvantage.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
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  Speaker 1: So it's a bit of a balancing act. We all
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  Speaker 1: kind of have our own technique in style, but basically,
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  Speaker 1: like let's say, for example, let's say the contest is
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  Speaker 1: a Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. You're stretching your stomach, eating
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  Speaker 1: like a maniac, you know, trying to get your stomach
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  Speaker 1: as stretched as you can. Thursday will be a lot
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  Speaker 1: of fluid, Friday will be a lot of fluid, no eating,
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  Speaker 1: and you kind of go from being full as humanly
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  Speaker 1: possible to as empty as humanly possible.
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  Speaker 3: That's the best way to describe it.
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  Speaker 1: So then on contest to day, you have as much
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  Speaker 1: real estate inside your body, yes, but as much like
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  Speaker 1: you know, capacity as possible.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, that you know, you you painted that picture
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  Speaker 2: rather well. And I know you just placed third in
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  Speaker 2: the annual Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest on the fourth
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  Speaker 2: of July's that's a big time yet forty five and
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  Speaker 2: a half dogs in ten minutes.
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  Speaker 3: That is absolutely incredible.
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  Speaker 2: And I know Joey Chustnet ended up winning that, but
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  Speaker 2: you've actually beaten Joey in some other eating competitions, right.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, Look, obviously Joey's the goat. He's been doing this
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  Speaker 1: twenty two years now. I'm into my fourth year so
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  Speaker 1: I'm trying to try to make up, you know, make
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  Speaker 1: up time with the base. But yeah, actually, like Joey
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  Speaker 1: is the undisputed He's the hot dog chap Man, Like,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know how he does it, but I've actually
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  Speaker 1: beaten him. I've been a few of his world records,
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  Speaker 1: but I've beaten him head to head in the last
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  Speaker 1: three chicken wing contests. The chicken wing so I'm actually
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  Speaker 1: your chicken, like like hot dogs are Joey's thing. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And don't get me wrong, Joey has a lot of
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  Speaker 1: really strong suits, right, but yeah, I'm actually for some reason,
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  Speaker 1: I'm really good at chicken wings. And I've beaten him
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  Speaker 1: three times in a row.
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  Speaker 3: Are these bones with chicken wings or with bones?
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  Speaker 1: No? No bones? So it's all about to pick, right,
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  Speaker 1: stripping the meat off the bone and the techniquing it.
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  Speaker 1: And because they weigh your bowl, right, so basically you
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  Speaker 1: get a twenty pound bowl of wings, and like if
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  Speaker 1: you only bite out of the wing and chuck it
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  Speaker 1: back in the bowl, like you can do that. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, like they're going
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  Speaker 1: to weigh your bowl. So the more meat you eat,
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  Speaker 1: you know, sorry, didn't mean to right there. But the
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  Speaker 1: more meat that gets eat it, the more chance you
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  Speaker 1: have a winning right. So I have a really good
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  Speaker 1: technique of like stripping the meat off the bone and
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  Speaker 1: you know, eating more meat than anybody else and me
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  Speaker 1: a lot of time.
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  Speaker 3: Dang, that is wild. This is so fascinating.
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  Speaker 2: And You've actually got a documentary coming to Amazon Prime
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  Speaker 2: on August twenty second called James Can Eat properly titled
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  Speaker 2: and in the trailer it shows you spent a long
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  Speaker 2: time in the hospital.
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  Speaker 3: Was that from competitive eating?
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  Speaker 1: No, definitely not. So. I've got a very rare autoimmune disease.
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  Speaker 1: It's called gin Barre syndrome. It's super rare. Not many
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  Speaker 1: people have it. Me obviously being from Australia, it was
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  Speaker 1: like not unheard of, but it was a rare feeding
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  Speaker 1: it took them frames to actually properly diagnose me. I
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  Speaker 1: ended up spending almost two years in the hospital with
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  Speaker 1: that kind of trying to get that, I guess under control.
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  Speaker 1: There's no cure for that autoimmune disease, so I just
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  Speaker 1: kind of live with it. But I'm definitely through the worst,
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  Speaker 1: bed and up and everything in season right.
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  Speaker 3: Good, good to hear man, that's good.
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  Speaker 4: To hear.
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  Speaker 2: Now, I want to get personal for a second. When
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  Speaker 2: you eat this incredible amount of food, what's the restroom situation?
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  Speaker 3: Like, is it is? Are you just parked in there
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  Speaker 3: for a second? Does your wife just clear the house?
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  Speaker 3: Like I gotta imagine that's not a pretty thing. We
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  Speaker 3: have separate butlers.
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  Speaker 5: Always the amounts of food I sometimes eat, I leave
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  Speaker 5: home without baby wipes, I need about, you know, twenty
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  Speaker 5: or thirty minutes quiet time sometimes because it does get.
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  Speaker 3: Well, twenty thirty minutes is what I averages that she.
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  Speaker 1: Has her own bathroom.
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  Speaker 2: For good research, she's got her own bathroom. No, but
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  Speaker 2: I mean twenty to thirty minutes is my average. So
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  Speaker 2: that's just from that.
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  Speaker 1: That's yeah, but it's kind of like, yeah, so you
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  Speaker 1: go from like hot flushes to cold flushes, and then
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  Speaker 1: you get like paying for a little bit.
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  Speaker 4: So you kind of sit there and like, you know,
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  Speaker 4: reevaluate your life choices and then you kind of back
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  Speaker 4: at it and you get these intense Tommy cramch Oh,
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  Speaker 4: my contest can be rough, like don't get you know,
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  Speaker 4: like the contest up the market can be a.
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  Speaker 1: Lot, so like you kind of just deal with it
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  Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, it is what it is.
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  Speaker 3: It's basically Mario's Thursday. Yeah yeah, damn that is.
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  Speaker 2: That is impressive and I'm looking forward to checking out
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  Speaker 2: the documentary.
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  Speaker 3: James.
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  Speaker 2: Good luck with everything and everyone, please be sure to
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  Speaker 2: check out the new documentary James Can Eat, which is
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  Speaker 2: coming to Amazon Prime August twenty second.
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  Speaker 3: Thanks for checking in, man, Thank you guys so much
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  Speaker 3: for having me. I really appreciate it. You got a buddy,
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  Speaker 3: take care of low.
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  Speaker 4: Mario Lopez