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Chestnut, a 16-time winner who had been competing in the contest for nearly two decades when he was rule ineligible, said on X at the time that he loved \"celebrating America with my fans all over this great country on the fourth,\" and that he had been training to defend his title.

While he wasn't able to compete in last year's Nathan's contest, Chestnut did celebrate the Fourth of July with an independent hot dog eating event in Fort Bliss, Texas. There, he ate 57 hot dogs in five minutes, one shy of Patrick Bertoletti's winning number at Nathan's, where Bertoletti took home his first Mustard Belt for consuming 58 hot dogs in 10 minutes.

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