In perhaps the cheesiest event of the season, contestants hailed from all over the country to Library Mall to engage in the only nationally sanctioned pizza-eating contest, hosted by Madison’s famous Ian’s Pizza Saturday.
The event was separated into a professional and amateur division.
The professional contestants were given 10 minutes to eat as many plain cheese slices from a 24-inch pizza pie as possible. The six food warriors were: Devin Hess, Lana “Marathon” Mades, Jamie “The Bear” McDonald, Molly Schuyler, Stephanie “Kanadu” Torres and University of Wisconsin-Madison’s own Eric “Silo” Dahl.
Schuyler managed 12.9 slices, giving her the first-place title, $1,000 prize money and new world record. She said she came into the contest expecting to take second place.
“I thought Jamie had me ... it came down to .7 slices of pizza,” Schuyler added.
Fourth-place winner and UW-Madison student Eric Dahl made it through 8.9 slices by the time the clock ran out, noting where he ran into some difficulty.
“It’s really that seven- to 10-minute mark, because your stomach is screaming at you, ‘What are you doing?’ and you just have to work through that,” Dahl said.
After the professionals proved they could keep down their slices to uphold the “no reversible” rule, 13 amateurs took the stage. The amateurs raced each other to see who could finish two slices of Ian’s classic Mac n’ Cheese pizza the fastest, where UW-Madison student Nikolas Miller claimed victory.
Professional contestants Torres, McDonald and Schuyler could all be seen eating together minutes after the professional contest had ended.
