One Very Large Man's 18-Year Quest For Hot Dog Eating Glory

WASHINGTON -- Eric "Badlands" Booker is exceptional at eating burritos.

In fact, he may be the best in the world. He holds the record for this particular act of gluttony, having once taken down 15 in an eight-minute span.

His gastronomical heroics have also made him a celebrity in the oddball circuit of competitive eating. A YouTube video showing Booker downing a 5-pound burrito during the Burritozilla eating challenge at Iguanas restaurant in San Jose, California, is equal parts mesmerizing, disturbing and nauseating.

Listen to our interview with Eric Booker below.

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But his feats of consumption don't end at the edge of the flour tortilla. In 2005, he won the U.S. Buffalo Wing Eating Championship after consuming 137 buffalo wings in 12 minutes.

"I get all the drumsticks out of the way," he said of his technique. "And when it comes to the flats, the paddles, if you grab maybe two bones of meat, you can actually just put them in your mouth and just pull and like 80 percent of the meat comes off. So, you know, I just get into a rhythm. Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull... pause, take a drink, wash it down and then repeat."

Booker has eaten 2 pounds of chocolate candy bars in just six minutes; downed 4 pounds of corned beef hash in under two minutes; packed away 49 glazed doughnuts in eight minutes; eaten 50 Purim cookies in six minutes; made his way through 21 baseball-sized matzo balls in just under 5 1/2 minutes; chowed down on 9 1/2 one-pound bowls of peas in 12 minutes; and, for some unknown reason, plowed through 8 1/2 ounces of Maui onions in one minute flat.

All these meals have established eating records, according to Major League Eating, a professional organization that calls itself "the undisputed authority on competitive eating worldwide."

All of them made Booker, who is 6 feet 5 inches tall and weighs roughly 400 pounds, a perennial top-ten eater in the International Federation of Competitive Eating's rankings.

Yet none of them are the gold standard.

Eric Booker, competing in The World-Famous Nathan's International Hot Dog Eating Contest, attempts to keep his food down.

This Independence Day, he'll get another shot, joining 15 competitive eaters on the stage for the opportunity to stuff their faces with as much meat and buns as possible. But unless something spectacular happens, this year's competition will probably end like all the others.

"It may seem like an impossible dream," Booker told The Huffington Post in an interview a few months ago, "but I really would like to win before I retire."

Booker got into competitive eating basically on a lark. A native of New York City, where he still works as an MTA subway conductor, he was walking with his kids past the Nathan's Famous in Oceanside, New York, in June 1997. Looking to play some video games and grab some grub, he stumbled upon a poster of Uncle Sam with a frank in his hand. "I want you to enter Nathan's hot dog eating contest," it read. Booker thought, basically, "Why the hell not?"

The manager told him to return the next day for the competition. And though his technique was amateurish (he put mustard and relish on the dogs), he won the qualifier with a final tally of 17 dogs in ten minutes.

But the main event didn't end in victory. None of them have.

The closest Booker has come was in 2002. That year, the famed Takeru Kobayashi consumed nearly twice as many hot dogs. But at the end of the competition, the food started to come back up. Kobayashi heaved a bit. He held back the vomit inside his ballooning cheeks, but it appeared that a bit of hot dog came out of his nose, which could have disqualified him.

The judges convened to debate the extent of Kobayashi's nasal vomit, but they declined to overturn the results. Booker settled for second place, having eaten 26 hot dogs to Kobayashi's 50.

"They gave it to him," Booker said. "And I respect the judges' decision."

As the science of competitive eating has progressed to put more emphasis on intestinal preparation, Booker's prospects for securing the Mustard Belt (awarded to the Nathan's winner) and a $10,000 check have only grown dimmer. Joey Chestnut has since vaulted past Kobayashi, holding the current record of 69 hot dogs in 10 minutes. Last year, he won with 61. Booker's top mark is a mere 40, which he set at a qualifying event.

The Mustard Belt, given to the winner of The World-Famous Nathan's International Hot Dog Eating Contest.

Like an aging tennis player lacing up against young upstarts at the U.S. Open, he's hoping that veteran savvy and a jolt from the hometown crowd can produce an improbable win; or, at least, enable him to further stretch the physical limits of the food his stomach can absorb.

Thirteen years after he nearly won on a technicality, Booker is still hungry -- in the proverbial sense, though probably the literal one too. With little prospect of a victory, he somehow remains eager to stuff food violently into his face for 10 minutes straight.

For months, Booker's worked to get his stomach in shape. He's eaten 10-20 pounds of cabbage, which he mixes with smoked turkey, garlic and vinegar (to help reduce the gas). He's fine-tuned his "Double Japanese" method -- named in honor of Kobayashi -- which involves taking two hot dogs out of the bun, eating them simultaneously, and then dipping both buns in water before swallowing them whole. And for the two days leading up to the contest, he'll simply stop eating.

When he takes the stage on Saturday, Booker will weigh 375 pounds -- lean (for him), focused and confident.

"I feel great," he said on Wednesday. "My attitude is my mantra. I'm hungry and I'm focused."

UPDATE: Victory once again proved elusive for Booker on July 4 as he finished in 9th place after downing a mere 24.5 hot dogs in 10 minutes. In what was a historic upset, Matt Stonie dethroned longtime champ Joey Chestnut by eating 62 hot dogs to his 60.

All was not lost for Booker. He had arguably the best intro among the contestants, walking up to the stage while being serenaded with one of his own rap songs.

"He's like the dog in the Looney Tunes, baby," the lyrics went. "He gets the steak, he's like, 'What, no gravy?""

Audio interview produced and edited by Ibrahim Balkhy, with technical help from Brad Shannon.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.