L.A. Beast

Kevin Strahle was born on January 6, 1984 in Ridgewood, New Jersey. He has three sisters, including one named Liz. His father worked for PepsiCo. and his mother was a school teacher. Growing up, he was a sturdy kid, which helped him join the football program at Ridgewood High School. After finishing school, he went to play for Fordham Rams of Fordham University in New York, where during his four years stint, he almost always started on the offensive line. While still in college, he started working at a club as a bouncer in the Bronx, New York. He graduated in 2006 with a major in History and a minor in Business. He got a job as a sales representative at Budweiser.

In 2008, he moved to Los Angeles, California, and started working for Pepsi. Two years later he quit his minimum wage job after the recession hit and he realised that his pay wasn’t enough to support him. He moved in back with his parents. He also went back to his old job at Budweiser. He moved to L.A. once more in 2011, but in October 2016 he returned to New Jersey. According to Strahle, the one person that helped him develop his appetite was his grandmother, who used to come over and cook meals for him.

The first challenge L.A. Beast ever completed was the ‘Fatburger XXXL Challenge’. Seeing the positive responses to the video of his ‘Milk Chugging Challenge’, which was filmed and uploaded by one of his friends, he started making YouTube videos as a weekend hobby. He began looking for new challenges to perform. He drank fifty raw eggs in one go, completed the ‘Cinnamon Challenge’ without spitting it out, and was kicked by a friend dressed in an Eeyore (from ‘Winnie-the-Pooh) costume while his mouth burned after eating a ghost pepper. The last one brought him his initial taste of mainstream fame. YouTube titan Ray William Johnson did a piece on him.

He was featured on MTV and truTV as well and soon began gaining huge popularity. It was in 2011 when Kevin Strahle began to refer to himself as L.A. Beast, a nickname that his fans embraced. On August 15, 2011, he was contacted by a former college teammate who suggested he should try competitive eating. Interested in the prospects, he competed at the ‘Wild Turkey 81 Eating World Championship’ in New York City. Although he came up last, it brought a sense of purpose to his life.

He ate 25 hot dogs in 10 minutes at the ‘2012 Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest’ qualifier that takes place in Cleveland, Ohio. In the same year, he participated in the ‘World Cupcake Eating Championship’. For his efforts he was ranked the 16th best competitive professional eater in the world, and then 17th the next year. Strahle drank 20-year-old Crystal Pepsi in February 2013 as a challenge. That eventually led him to start a successful campaign to bring back the drink in 2015. In order to break the 70-year-old ‘Chicago Cubs Curse’, Strahle, alongside fellow competitive eaters Tim Brown, Bob Shoudt, Patrick Bertoletti, and Takeru Kobayashi, ate an entire goat in September 2015. The Cubs famously won the World Series the very next year.

The month of May 2017 had been incredibly productive for him. He created four new ‘Guinness Book World Records’ within a span of ten days! On May 3, he ate 642.12 grams of chicken nuggets in three minutes, breaking the previous record of 531 grams. On the same day he consumed 121.90 grams of Bhut Jolokia chilli peppers in two minutes, making his second record. On May 13, he made two more records for “the most powdered doughnuts eaten in 3 minutes” (9), and “the fastest time to drink a bottle of maple syrup” (10.84 seconds).