/ 13 October 2008

Forty-five pizza slices in 10 minutes

Chowdown champ Joey Chestnut has done it again, this time proving he’s a pizza powerhouse.

Chestnut downed 45 slices in 10 minutes on Sunday to win the first Famous Famiglia World Pizza-Eating Championship in Times Square.

He says he fasted for more than a day to prepare for the contest, and he folded and squeezed the slices to make them easier to swallow.

The 24-year-old rocketed to competitive-eating celebrity when he won Coney Island’s July Fourth hot-dog eating contest in 2007. He took the title again this summer by gulping down 59 dogs in 10 minutes.

Last month, he consumed 93 Krystal hamburgers in eight minutes to win a contest in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Chestnut lives in San Jose, California. — Sapa-AP