Sammies’ first ever chow hound champion bacon eating contest made quite a spectacle Friday night as one hungry man, Michael Dallas Jordan, of Union City, ate his way to victory.
Rain or shine, the Martin community and others filled the stands and gathered under tents and tree branches to take part in what will hopefully go on to be, a Sammies tradition.
“We’re just doing this as a feel good thing. We want people to feel good about Sammies. So, we’re doing it for fun. This is just fun to help the community, help make the soybean festival a bigger thing,” said Mark Laderman, Sammies’ owner. “We were asking ourselves, ‘You know, how can we contribute to the soybean festival?’ We know a lot of hogs eat soybeans, and so in a way soybeans become bacon, bacon is just soybeans. So, we were thinking along those lines and we thought a bacon eating contest!”
Sammies’ workers set aside time between 7 a.m.-4 p.m. to cook 200 pounds of Wright Brand bacon for Friday’s chow hound challenge. Each of the ten contestants received a plate overflowing with bacon strips weighing in at a lofty three pounds per plate. Plates piled high with 170 pounds of leftover bacon were passed around to anyone in the Martin community seriously craving and in need of some bacon.
Contest rules stated that if any man were to finish his plate before the five minutes set on the official timer ran out, then he would automatically be crowned the one and only chow hound champion. However, the monstrous portions led the stage girls to weighing the few pieces left on the plates individually in determining who was going to be the chow hound champion. Consuming half a pound of bacon, Michael Jordan received, in all its glory, a massive bacon trophy and a $100 gift card to Sammies for future dining pleasure.
“It’s, it’s awesome. I probably won’t enter next year,” Laderman said. “I’d like to maybe you know come in like a pageant queen and hand off the crown to the new champion or whatever, but you never know, I may enter next year. I may not, but it feels really really good right now.”
Go to Sammies’ Chow Hound Champion Bacon Eating Contest Photo Gallery to view more photos.
Featured Photo Credit: (Katie Nixon)
Love the soybean to bacon analogy. : )
Great article.