Seth Wenig / AP

Joey Chestnut, center left, and Takeru Kobayashi, center right, face off during the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Competition at Coney Island last year.

The training regimen for both is serious. Kobayashi lifts weights to add muscle and increase metabolism, and exercises to make sure no fat is around his stomach to impede expansion. Chestnut consumes only water, milk and protein supplements for three days, then chomps down as many hot dogs as he can in 10 minutes on day four. He even listens to "Rocky" music, though he doesn’t follow his engorgement by running up the steps of anything.

So the stage is set for an epic showdown. Except this rivalry has one more bit of intrigue – reports that Kobayashi might be too hurt to compete.

On his Japanese-language blog, Kobayashi reported he has developed jaw problems, including arthritis. "I feel ashamed that I couldn't notice the alarm bells set off by my own body," he wrote. "But with the goal to win another title with a new record, I couldn’t stop my training so close to the competition. I was continuing my training and bearing with the pain but finally I destroyed my jaw."

Chestnut responded by saying he wondered if Kobayashi was sandbagging now that he had actual competition for his hot-dog title, which Kobayashi denied, though the talk of injury appears to be setting up another kind of rivalry moment – the Leonard-Duran "no mas" fight, in which Roberto Duran quit midfight when Sugar Ray Leonard was beating him up too much.

It would be a shame if Chestnut — ranked No. 2 to No. 1 Kobayashi in the International Federation of Competitive Eating rankings — ascended to the top spot without having a chance to beat a healthy Kobayashi one-on-one. If Kobayashi’s jaw problems are as serious as he says — for example, he can’t open his jaw enough to put more than one finger in it — then the epic rivalry will fizzle in a hurry, and take the "sport" of competitive eating with it. A great rivalry ends with a epic bang, not a, ahem, reversal of fortune.

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