Windy City wing king

WHEN WING BOWL ended, the number was repeated over and over, like some ancient mantra, and it took Angelo Cataldi right to reality's edge on the floor of the Wells Fargo Center.

"Four. Four. Four," a man repeated to the longtime 94WIP morning radio host.

It was the number of chicken wings - 444 - and somehow Patrick "Deep Dish" Bertoletti had stuffed them all in and swallowed them in a record-shattering comeback win at Wing Bowl 23.

Cataldi, his face full of disbelief, scribbled the math out on a piece of paper and threw his Sharpie down hard when he was done. The sound it made resembled a skull cracking under the weight of impossibility.

"I've never seen anything like that before," Cataldi said. "He ate 51 wings in the last two minutes."

Bertoletti, a Chicago native, sat farther down on the stage after his victory with bits of chicken stuck in his mild BBQ-flavored beard. He'd been losing to reigning Wing Bowl champion Molly Schuyler going into the final round, down 399 to 393, and the two titans gnawed back and forth like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, lifting one another to another level.

"This is the best thing I've ever done in my life," Bertoletti said.

The top local finisher, Bob "The Notorious B.O.B." Shoudt, of Royersford, finished a distant third with 138 wings. John "Stormin Norman" Tiska, from the University of Pennsylvania, was the top collegiate finisher.

Bertoletti lifted up his shirt on the stage, revealing his pale, doughy power zone, an everyman beer belly that was busy digesting poultry from more than 100 chickens.

He was prepared to eat 400 wings because he recently ate 300, he said, and like a true warrior, he was somehow contemplating ice cream in the near future.

"I dug deep from somewhere," he said.

Bertoletti's win brought riches - some new bling on his finger, a Harley and a crown, while elsewhere in the arena, his buddies were carrying around his giant $10,000 check, extolling his glory.

"I'm going to whatever strip club Patrick Bertoletti is paying for," said Tim "Gravy" Brown, his friend and fellow competitor.

Women's bellies weren't nearly so hidden for most of the morning. Most women in the eating zone wore bikinis or bits and pieces of one. Some just wore electrical tape.

Nia, a dancer at Delilah's Den, held a plate of wings in her hand near Bertoletti before the final round, dressed in what appeared to be a revealing gymnastics leotard. She said she knows some think Wing Bowl degrades women but she noted that the girls on stage "weren't the ones taking their tops off."

"Honestly, I feel worse for the chickens," Nia, 23, said.

Thanks to the "Can Cam," spectators were able to see the brief flashes of bare breasts they'd come to expect from the women sitting around them at Wing Bowl.

Any two women seated near one another were also targeted on kiss cam.

Wing Bowl isn't trying to convert its critics said Marc Rayfield, senior vice president and market manager for CBS Radio.

"The people who don't like it are never going to like it," he said as he kept track of the event yesterday.

No one on stage appeared to vomit, although someone, somewhere in the building, likely did.

Spectators threw soft hot dogs from their seats and saved their greatest scorn for all the guys who dressed up as Dallas Cowboys-loving Chris Christie.

A paper mache Christie's manhood was ridiculed by Wingettes before it was stomped. Another Christie lookalike was caught on kiss cam with a faux Jerry Jones.

WIP dropped dumb humor gold when it revealed a video it's been holding on to of Christie falling off a chair during a studio appearance.

Christie toppling over, again and again, didn't get old.

Cataldi said Christie just pushed Philly too hard.

"It was my boss' decision to release the video and he's a Republican," he said.

Cataldi believed Bertoletti's record would stand, etched forever in the annals of wing eating. He couldn't even fathom someone eating 500 wings.

But in the bowels of the Wells Fargo Center, Schuyler still seemed ready to go, time her only enemy.

"I'll be back," she said. "I don't know what the limit is. Anything is possible. Maybe 700?"