Move over cowboys, there’s a new competitive eating champion in town
Anything you can eat, she can eat bigger and faster. Molly Schulyer, of Bellevue, Nebraska, officially showed the rest of the competitive eating world how it’s done when she ate two 72 ounce steaks (and several sides) at the infamous Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. (And if you’re right now thinking, “wait is that where Barbra Streisand entered a competitive eating competition in The Guilt Trip?” The answer is “yes, yes it is.”) The restaurant has a long-standing competition, in which customers must eat a meal consisting of the steak itself, plus bread roll with butter, baked potato, shrimp cocktail, and salad in under an hour; otherwise, the meal costs $72.
Not only did Schulyer complete the challenge in under an hour, she finished two (you read that correctly) TWO giant steak meals in 20 minutes! In case you need a little context, that is nine pounds of meat, two buttered rolls, two baked potatoes, two servings of shrimp cocktail, and two salads. She is one fierce competitor. I’m never one to reveal a lady’s weight, but it stands to mention that Schuyler ate approximately 15% of her body weight. IN UNDER 20 MINUTES! That, folks, is amazing.
As the legend goes, the Big Texan contest started in 1962 when cowboy after cowboy would come in from the road and claim to have the biggest appetite. All the gents would bet on who could eat the most until one soft-spoken cowboy came in and continued to eat until he had consumed the equivalent of a 72 oz sirloin. The owner of The Big Texan declared that anybody who could eat a 72 oz steak that fast, would get it for free from now on.
Well those cowboys have nothing on Molly Schulyer. She finished two meals in record time, becoming the only woman to have ever done so. “We witnessed history,” Big Texan co-owner Danny Lee told the Amarillo Globe News. Schuyler is a competitive eater, so it should be mentioned that she is a trained, eating machine. During the contest she devoured a medium-rare steak in less than five minutes, just one nudge toward the record time she set for eating the massive dinner.
Schulyer, all of 5-foot-7, calls herself a “bottomless pit,” and regularly breaks records, recently devouring 363 wings in a half-hour competition in Philadelphia. You can watch Molly crush The Big Texan challenge in its record-busting glory (she filmed the entire thing and put it on YouTube.)
Historically a predominantly male sport, competitive eating has seen more and more women not only participate but dominate. Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas (also of small stature) has made history at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest, and more and more women are making names for themselves while chowing down.
Just like any true competitor, Schuyler is not satisfied with just this victory. The Nebraska native, and mother of four, said her next challenge will be to try and consume three entire meals in under an hour, and the safe money is on her to win!
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