Crawfish Eating Contest Ends in Controversy
by Ben BeEssen
Ricky’s on the River has been a popular restaurant on the Strong River for years. Valleyans love their fried catfish and seafood, and the place is always buzzing on Thursday, Friday, and Saturdays nights. Ricky decided to take advantage of the crawfish craze this year and have a crawfish eating contest. He publicized the contest on social media, and they had a great crowd this past Saturday night for the festivities.
The first annual Ricky’s on the River Mudbug Mayhem was held Saturday night. It was a huge event, and there was a large raucous crowd. The Dirtdobbers were performing live music, and the place was crazy. There were 8 eaters that signed up for the contest. The overwhelming favorite was Billy Boudreaux; he’s well known in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region for consuming other worldly amounts of crawfish. He’s known as the Joey Chestnut of competitive crawfish eating. He travels around to any crawfish eating contest he can find. The other 7 contestants had no competitive eating experience, so no one gave them a shot.
Contestants had 15 minutes to eat as many crawfish as possible. There were 3 judges, and the judges inspected the final trays and made sure all the crawfish were eaten. With only 15 minutes, the contestants had to be efficient in popping or peeling the tails and getting to the meat. That’s where Billy Boudreaux really separates himself. He can pop those tails off in his sleep; he’s an absolute machine. As you would expect, Boudreaux started off strong and really ran away from the competition. About 5 minutes in, all the contestants stopped for a moment and just watched Boudreaux. He was in an absolute zone. He ended up stopping around the 8 minute mark, because he knew the competition was basically over and he wasn’t feeling well. He sat back and sipped on a Coors Light. He ended up eating 159 crawfish in the allotted 15 minutes. His nearest competitor, Ron Reddclaw, ate 127 crawfish. Boudreaux could’ve easily eaten over 300 if he wouldn’t have had an upset stomach.
Things got interesting after the contest was over. Evidently, no one read the fine print. One contest rule stated that contestants would be disqualified if they vomited within 5 minutes of the end of the contest. Boudreaux hadn’t felt his best that day. He vomited violently two times right after the contest was over. He said, “Something was off with my stomach; I don’t know what it was. But, athletes sometimes have to play injured, and that’s what I did. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold em down after it was over. I had no idea about this 5 minute rule. It’s a bunch of bs. I won it fair and square and everybody knows it. They are just jealous, and they didn’t want me to win in the first place. They didn’t want a Cajun coming up here and dunkin on em.”
Boudreaux yelled obscenities at the judges after he was informed he was not the winner, and he had to be restrained by his handlers. A few of his Cajun friends had some not so kind words for the judges as well. When asked what the Cajuns said, a couple bystanders said that they weren’t sure, but they know they were really mad. The event organizers said they’ll have security present at next year’s contest. Reddclaw was announced as the winner. Boudreaux said, “They better be glad I wasn’t feeling well, cuz I would’ve opened a can on em. It wouldn’t have been pretty. I’ll be back next year, and I can’t wait!”
Reddclaw reluctantly accepted the trophy. He said, “I won on a technicality, but I won. My name is on the trophy. No one will ever be able to take that away from me.” The first annual Ricky’s on the River Mudbug Mayhem was a big hit, and I’m sure it will only grow in popularity in the coming years. The SRVO will be back at Ricky’s this time next year to give you the rundown.