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National Buffalo Wing Festival

Food festival in Buffalo, New York

Summary

Food festival in Buffalo, New York

Field	Value
name	National Buffalo Wing Festival
logo	[[Image:Buffalo wing festival.jpg	200px]]
image	Buffalo wing fest crowd.jpg
imagesize	250px
date	Labor Day weekend, 2–3 September 2023
frequency	Annual
location	Sahlen Field
years_active
first
attendance	80,000/yr
organized	Drew Cerza
website

National Buffalo Wing Festival or Wing Fest is a weekend festival held on Labor Day weekend at Sahlen Field in Buffalo, New York, United States, celebrating the Buffalo style chicken wing. The festival culminates with the IFOCE sanctioned Buffalo Wing eating contest, which has taken place the Sunday of the festival since 2003, except 2020 when it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Event history

This festival was inaugurated in 2002 at Sahlen Field. Founder Drew Cerza, called the "Wing King" by Buffalo News, was said to have modeled the event on a fictitious festival from the 2001 movie Osmosis Jones.

Jill Greenburg said, "Of local festivals that have come and gone, the Wing Fest's staying power is a result of raising approximately $200,000 for local charities and serving almost 3,000,000 chicken wings with 100 sauce varieties to over 500,000 hungry visitors over the years." In 2010, the festival was video webcast live to over 84,000 online viewers.

On September 2, 2012, Joey Chestnut consumed 191 wings, weighing 7.61 lb, in 12 minutes to take competitive-eating trophy from seven-time champion Sonya Thomas, becoming the first new champion since 2006. After losing to Miki Sudo in 2013, Chestnut returned to his winning ways in 2014 by breaking his own record by eating 192 wings and successfully defended his title the next year by breaking yet another record, this time eating 205 wings on September 6, 2015. Two years later, he set another record, this time of 220 wings on September 3, 2017. Geoff Esper holds the record of 281 in 2019.

With the 2020 festival canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 19th was deferred to 2021. However, the Chicken Wing Fun Run went virtual. The 2021 event was held at Highmark Stadium, to which the festival returned in 2022. The 2022 festival also added a qualifying event for the USA Mullet Championships, which Cerza found to be a fitting synergy given the haircut's popularity in ice hockey, a popular sport in Buffalo.

The event will return to Sahlen Field beginning in 2025.

Event contests

[[Joey Chestnut]] competing at the 2012 festival at [[Sahlen Field

Contests at the National Buffalo Wing Festival include:

US Chicken Wing Eating Championship
Amateur Chicken Wing Eating
Amateur Traditional Sauce Contest
Amateur Creative Sauce Contest
Ridiculously Hot Wing Eating Contest
Miss Buffalo Wing
Bobbing for Wings
Baby Wing
Buffalo Buffet Bowl
Yancey's Fancy Cheesiest Couple Contest
Yancey's Fancy Cheesy Dance-Off Contest
Battle of the Border
College Wing Eating Competition
Chicken Wing 5K (3.107 mi.) Run, since 2016.

US chicken wing eating championship competition winners

Contest duration is 12 minutes.

	Date	Name	Chicken wings eaten	Notes
I	9/2/2002	N/A	N/A	Inaugural
II	9/1/2003	USA Sonya "Black Widow" Thomas	134
III	9/1/2004	161	Event record
IV	9/3/2005	nowrap	USA Eric "Badlands" Booker	137
V	9/2/2006	nowrap	USA Chip Simpson	158
VI	9/1/2007	USA Sonya "Black Widow" Thomas	173	Event record
VII	8/30/2008	165
VIII	9/6/2009	169
IX	9/5/2010	181	Event record
X	9/4/2011	183	Event record
XI	9/2/2012	nowrap	USA Joey "Jaws" Chestnut	191	Event record
XII	9/1/2013	nowrap	USA Miki Sudo	178
XIII	8/31/2014	USA Joey "Jaws" Chestnut	192	Event record
XIV	9/6/2015	205
XV	9/4/2016	188
XVI	9/3/2017	220	Event record
XVII	9/2/2018	206
XVIII	9/1/2019	USA Geoff Esper	281	New record.
XIX	9/05/2021	USA Miki Sudo	246	Women's event record.
XX	9/04/2022	233
XXI	9/03/2023	AUS James Webb	276
XXII	8/31/2024	236

References

Klinck, Patrick. (September 1, 2012). "Buffalo Wing Festival Starts Second Decade in a Big Way". WGRZ.com.
"National Buffalo Wing Festival | Still Buffalo".
Baldwin, Richard. (2012-09-05). "He ate 191 wings, but who's counting?". The Buffalo News.
(August 30, 2022). "USA Mullet Championships hosts qualifying event at Buffalo Wing Fest".
Campbell, Brian. (December 10, 2024). "National Buffalo Wing Festival to move back to Sahlen Field in 2025".
"Contest Information". National Buffalo Wing Festival.
(2010-09-06). "2010 National Buffalo Wing Festival - Black Widow Wins". www.allvoices.com.
(2012-09-02). "Chestnut eats record 191 wings in 12 minutes". timesheraldonline.
[https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/im-so-shocked-james-webb-breaks-world-record-in-chicken-wing-eating-championship-joey-chestnut-second ‘I’m so shocked:’ James Webb breaks world record in Chicken Wing Eating Championship; Joey Chestnut second]

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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