'Super' Squibb defends title at WIP's Wing Bowl 18
'Super' Squibb defends title at WIP's Wing Bowl 18
Jonathan Squibb, a.k.a Super Squibb, is WIP's Wing Bowl 18 champion. It's his second consecutive victory. (Thomas George Carroll / For Philly.com)
PHILADELPHIA – The defending champion returned to WIP’s Wing Bowl 18 and devoured the competition on Friday morning.
Jonathan “Super” Squibb, a skinny 24-year-old from Winslow Township, N.J., ate 238 wings in 30 minutes to set up a wing-off in next year's event with a previous three-time champion, Joey Chestnut of San Jose, Calif., a professional eater.
Squibb finished three wings short of Chestnut’s record 241 wings in the 2008 event. Wing Bowl, closed the past two years to professional eaters, will welcome them next year, setting up the showdown.
Super Squibb, as he is known, got off to a torrid pace, eating 126 wings in the opening 14-minute round, on his way to slamming his 28 competitors, including Not Rich, Cheesecake Beefcake and Hot Pockets.
Squibb won a 2010 F-150 truck and a championship ring for his efforts. Last year, he claimed a Mini Cooper automobile.
The graduate of Rutgers University and Winslow Township High School was favored to repeat by 2-1 odds by 610 WIP talker Al Morganti, who created Wing Bowl at the Philly sports talk station years ago as a diversion for sports fans then mired in a pro sports championship drought.
Squibb said he never felt nauseous, and may have misplayed the final two-minute round to fall short of the record at the event, held again before dawn at the Wachovia Center in South Philadelphia.
Chestnut won Wing Bowl in 2006, 2007 and 2008. He attended this year’s event as a spectator.
This year’s Wing Bowl also featured a mechanical bull-riding competition for Wingettes, the young women who make up each eater's contingent of supporters. The Wingette wins a top prize of a 2010 Harley Davidson Sportster motorcycle.
Also attending the event as a featured Wingette was Snooki, of MTV’s “Jersey Shore” reality show, who flew in from Los Angeles in the nick of time to meet the crowd. She was joined by adult film actresses Katie Morgan, who has a show on HBO, and Mary Carey, who ran for governor of California in the 2003 recall election.
Other competitors in the field were Lights Out Taylor, The Mouth of the South, Obi Wing and Tiger Wing.
