On a Wing and a Prayer
Swallow Your Pride follows six Wing Bowl-ers, including hometown hero Bill "El Wingador" Simmons.
EAT TO THE BEAT: Bill “El Wingador” Simmons devours some cluckers in the Wing Bowl doc Swallow Your Pride.
|
[ film feast ]
Nothing tastes sweeter than revenge doused in several gallons of spicy wing sauce. That's what five-time champ Bill "El Wingador" Simmons devoured when he reclaimed the Wing Bowl crown from the slight-but-ravenous Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas in 2005. When he lost to her the year prior, El Wingador was forced to gulp down something a lot tougher to swallow than 200 chicken wings: his brutish pride. "I really got my balls broke a lot by losing to a little girl," he says, "It was tough, man."
His triumphant return is chronicled in Swallow Your Pride, a new documentary that screens at National Mechanics. The film spotlights various competitors qualifying for the chance to compete in the 2005 competition, but the bulk of the film chows down on El Wingador's rematch with The Black Widow, who he believes should not have won in 2004. "I don't think they were counting my wings and they were cleaner than hers. She was dropping a lot of chicken on the floor and still getting her points," Simmons says. Maybe it's just a case of still-sour grapes, though it has been suggested that the competition was rigged because of his unrelenting victory streak. "[The organizers] wanted more competitiveness," he says, "It's like a Mike Tyson situation. People don't want to go to every one of his fights and watch him knock someone out in the first round."
It may have been the scenario organizers hoped for, but El Wingador's legion of drunken fans raised all kinds of hell when the The Black Widow spun a suffocating web around their hero's glory. "It's important to Philadelphians that someone from this area wins," he says, "They don't want an outsider coming in to win our Philadelphia Wing Bowl." When he recovered the title in 2005, he says there were 300 people rallying behind him as he left the stadium, his cajones again intact — a nice reward after a wicked yearlong training regimen that he says took a toll on his aging frame.
To prepare for the competition he downed 15 pounds of food and three gallons of water every day to stretch his stomach. On top of that, he'd gnaw on 10 pounds of frozen Tootsie Rolls each week to build chomping strength because he says the jaw is the first thing to tire during an eating competition.
At 48, Wingador says his competitive eating days are likely behind him. His celebrity has afforded him the opportunity to say farewell to his 19-year run as a truck driver to dabble in entrepreneurial pursuits, such as the distribution of his signature hot wing sauce. And while you'd think the opposite, he says his taste for fowl actually hasn't fouled at all. "I eat chicken every day, dude. I think I was a chicken hawk in a past life," he says, laughing. "If I see a live chicken, I want to eat it."
(joshua.middleton@citypaper.net)
Also In This Week's Agenda Section
Icepack
Comments
Be the first to comment on this article.