With Joey Chestnut absent, it’s anybody’s game.
The 16-time champion will not be partaking in the 2024 Nathan’s hot dog eating contest, leaving room for a new winner.
“It’s gonna come down to the last one or two hotdogs” Pablo Martinez, a former competitive eater who currently holds the No. 21 spot, said in an interview with The Post.
Chestnut, 40, remains the current record-holder with 76 hotdogs in 2021 and no one has come close to surpassing him.
He has won the contest 16 of the last 17 years and the last eight straight.
Someone else will be walking away the winner for the first time since 2015 with Matt Stonie upset Chestnut
Australian James Webb — the No.1 ranked eater in Australia and No. 5 eater in the world — is a clear frontrunner and fan favorite, according to contest host George Shea, who also said things would be “neck and neck” without Chestnut.
Webb, who weighed in at 213 pounds at Wednesday’s weigh-in, has won six out of 10 Major League Eating events in the last six months and even beat Chestnut in a pistachio eating contest in California earlier this year (fellow contestant Nick Wehry also beat Chestnut in that competition).
“I want to be the first Australian to ever eat 50-plus at Coney Island,” Webb told The Post before the weigh-in, adding that he has spent the last year trying to “earn my stripes” before the contest.
Though Webb set a personal record of 47 hot dogs in Coney Island last year, he fell far short of outdoing Chestnut’s 62.
“I don’t think anyone will ever break his [Chestnut’s] record, it is unfathomable to think that,” Martinez said.
Webb will compete against four other male contestants ranked as the world’s top 50 eaters by MLE: Ricardo Corbucci of Brazil; Patrick Bertoletti of Illinois; Nick Wehry of Florida; and Geoffrey Esper of Massachusetts.
As the five men attempt 50-plus hot dogs in just 10 minutes — far from 76 — Chestnut will be competing against soldiers in Fort Bliss, Texas on Independence Day.
“Three weeks ago, they weren’t going to win. Now they’re going to win,” Shea said Wednesday.
The 2024 Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest starts at 10:45 a.m. Eastern on ESPN with the women’s competition.
The men’s competition will follow at noon ET.
