Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi (小林 尊, Kobayashi Takeru; born March 15, 1978) is a retired Japanese competitive eater. Described as "the godfather of competitive eating", he is a six-time Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest champion and widely credited with popularizing the sport. Description above from the Wikipedia article Takeru Kobayashi, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.