Good Sports: Competitive eating with Pablo Martinez

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- While most professional athletes love to test themselves with a ball of some sort, Visalia native Pablo Martinez prefers the challenge of food -- as one of America's top competitive eaters.

"For me I used to watch a show called 'Man vs. Food,' and that kind of piqued my interest. I thought that's so cool to travel to places and try new food challenges," said Martinez.

Earlier this week, Martinez competed in the Hooters Worldwide Wing Eating Championship in Las Vegas, battling top-ranked Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, among others.

"You know I really looked up to him. Here's this great guy that's just a great athlete. And so when I got to meet him and just talk to him, and for him to even know who I am even before I met him, it completely blew my mind," said Martinez.

But even though it looks like it's just shoveling as much food as possible into your mouth in 10 minutes, Martinez insists there's a lot more strategy that goes into it.

"There's technique, hand speed and capacity. The more food you can hold in your stomach, the bigger numbers you're going to put up," said Martinez. "The second thing is technique. So for hot dogs, everyone does the dunking of the buns. And then hand speed. So you have to really coordinate how your hands are moving because if you slow down, if you don't have a certain rhythm of how you're eating the food, it can really lose valuable time in how much you're eating fast."

And anyone who thinks polishing off more than 100 wings in only 10 minutes isn't a sport, just think about how you'd feel physically immediately afterwards.

"Ask any professional athlete how much time and commitment they put into it and it is; It's astonishing how much," said Martinez. "And just ask any of my other colleagues that do professional eating. We put a lot of training, we invest a lot of time and money into making us the best and most efficient eaters."

Martinez ate 104 wings in 10 minutes.

Competitive eating isn't a full-time job for Martinez, who works as a licensed marriage and family therapist in Visalia. But it is something he doesn't plan on giving up anytime soon.

"You know competitive eating for me has just been something that I love to do. It's kind of like a hobby," said Martinez. "Plus I get to travel, which is one of my passions. I love to go and see places. And what's better than that? And food. So it's just a really cool thing."

This coming Tuesday is National Chicken Wing Day. In honor of the holiday, Hooters is issuing a challenge to wing enthusiasts to consume more than 2 million wings in one day.

If you're interested in taking part, the Fresno Hooters will host a wing eating contest on July 29. The winner will take home a signed T-shirt and bragging rights.