Darron Breeden lives a double life. During the week, he teaches business and IT classes to high school students. On the weekend, he stuffs his face.
Breeden, an Orange, Virginia, native, is the nation’s third-ranked competitive eater, per Major League Eating. On July 4, he’ll be going for gold in the Nathan’s Famous July Fourth July Hot Dog-Eating Contest on Coney Island. When he’s not training and competing, he’s cooking up content for Darron Eats, his YouTube channel where the food challenges attract over 48,000 subscribers. (Recent videos include “40 HOT DOG SPEED RUN” and “PRO EATER VS. WOOD GRILL BUFFET.”)
Some of his students are impressed by his not-so-secret alter ego. Others, not as much. “If it doesn’t have to do with Fortnite, or whatever, it’s irrelevant,” Breeden says.
Breeden finished second in Nathan’s hot dog competition (the “Super Bowl of competitive eating”) in 2020 and 2019. He’s also a two-time oyster-eating champion, and he holds the record for most cheese curds eaten in six minutes (5 lbs., 2 oz.) and fastest consumption of 48 Oreos and a half gallon of whole milk (two minutes, 28 seconds).
Breeden became involved with the competitive eating community in 2015 while teaching English in Japan. He participated in a local restaurant’s challenge to eat a large helping of curry rice in 20 minutes. He beat the record—and kept at it, attempting other food challenges until he qualified for the hot dog contest in 2017.
“I can’t speak for all competitive eaters, but I think competitive eating came to us, rather than us going to competitive eating,” Breeden says. “I used to be a bigger guy and I lost a good bit of weight. Even though I lost the weight, I didn’t lose the appetite.”
Not many kids dream of growing up and becoming competitive eaters. But for Breeden, competitive eating is more than pushing your body to the limit. “I love the competition. I also love the camaraderie. I’ve met a lot of great people through competitive eating,” he says. “And of course the food is great.”
According to his profile on the Major League Eating website, Breeden is “a six-foot-tall, guitar-playing, motorcycle-riding, weight-lifting crusher of food.” He’s 32 and weighs 165 pounds.
Given his stats, it’s hard to believe Breeden’s capable of putting away as much food as he does. “You’d be surprised. There’s a lot of different folks out there competing: bodybuilders, really small girls that are maybe 100 pounds soaking wet, a guy that formerly played basketball,” he says. “As long as you have an appetite, [competitive eating] is for all people, really.”
Like any athlete, training helps Breeden stay in shape. If he has a big contest on the horizon, he trains specifically for that event, practicing by eating as much of that event’s food as possible within the allotted time. But for general stomach capacity upkeep, he eats large amounts of low-calorie food and tops it off with soda and water.
“Two hundred calories of cabbage is still a crap-ton of cabbage,” Breeden says with a laugh.
As for his stomach, he claims he mostly feels okay after training or a competition. “I would say usually under 10 pounds [of food], I’m feeling all right. Over 10 pounds is a little rough,” Breeden says. “It’s kind of like that feeling you get after Thanksgiving dinner where you’re like, ‘Ah, I ate too much.’ It’s that times 10.”
Breeden will take the stage on Coney Island at 12:30pm on Sunday. “A bunch of people eating hot dogs on the Fourth of July,” Breeden says. “How much more American can it get?”