When chef Jeremy Shaffer emerged onto the patio of Six Rivers Brewery with a steaming stainless steel bowl of hot wings in his arms, the tang wafted into the crowd, setting jaws tingling. Fourteen contestants in the brewery’s annual wing eating competition stood in a line between a long table and the back fence, kitchen towels and pint glasses of water ready before them.
The challenge each year is to eat — and keep down — as many wings slathered in Schaffer’s ever-changing custom wing-competition hot sauce as one can in the space of three minutes. Water and beer are allowed, and bones are counted once time is called.
Heavily seasoned veterans stood shoulder to shoulder with first timers as brewery co-owners Meredith Maier and Talia Nachshon dished out piles of wings slathered in deep red-brown sauce with long metal tongs. At one end, a couple of men groused playfully about the absence of ranch dressing, which was, someone remarked, for the weak.
At the other end of the table stood the Journal‘s own California News Fellow Anne To, the sole woman in the contest, making her first foray into competitive eating. Beside her towered 6-foot-4-inch Marcus Gooch, who refused water and knelt down to hunch over his plate.
Once the clock started, the frenzy began. Formerly smiling faces folded into grimaces against the heat — spice and temperature — and fingers slipped over saucy drumsticks as Maier and Nachshon hustled to replenish piles.
While To made a strong opening, the sauce, which she estimated at 7 out of 10 in terms of spiciness, began to take its toll. “I feel like I could’ve ate more, but I had shoved too much chicken into my mouth at once and it made me have to pause to chew it all down, and when I did that, the spiciness hit me,” said To when it was all over. “That is what made me have to slow down my pace a lot at the end.” All told, she made a solid showing, tying three other competitors with seven wings eaten. She will be back to shoot for 10 wings next year, likely with a shirt she doesn’t care about.
It was To’s neighbor Gooch who took home the coveted rhinestone-encrusted chicken claw and the title of 2025 Wing Contest Champion. As the bones were counted, his sister-in-law Lorena Reynolds sat at a nearby table with his toddler Malina, unsurprised. “I believe it,” Reynolds said, having seen him eat to win before. “His nickname is Big Gooch. … I knew he had a good chance of winning.”
So did Gooch. While some of the contestants signed up for fun, he said, “In my mind, I was about business when I went.” In his hometown of Sacramento, he’d broken the local Buffalo Wild Wings record a few years back, devouring 12 wings in one minute and four seconds. While he was unable to maintain that jaw-burning pace and hit the 30 wings he was shooting for, Gooch did manage to take down 20 wings in three minutes at Six Rivers Brewery, beating last year’s 18 with visibly cleaner bones.
Gooch, who transferred to Humboldt State University in 2021, fell in love with the county’s camping, fishing and hunting, as well as its cooler weather. “I run hot,” he said, adding his best friend kept him in the area, too. That friend, Chris, was also the one who introduced the spice averse Gooch to the hot stuff. “I was afraid of too much black pepper, I was afraid of a jalapeño,” said Gooch. Eventually he even started growing his own chiles. A former chef and now manager at Lost Coast Brewery and Café, he uses homegrown chiles in his cooking at home. “You start to realize that spice can add another dynamic, another flavor into a dish,” he said. These days, with his toddler Malina and his pregnant wife Cleo at home, he tries to go easy. Still, he said, “I don’t mind tasting anything spicy, as long as it has flavor, that’s for sure.”
Rating the Six Rivers Brewery competition wings at a 4 out of 10 for spiciness, Gooch’s tolerance for heat gave him an advantage. But he made tactical choices, as well.
“This isn’t a beer and water competition and that’s gonna slow you down,” said Gooch, who opted to avoid either and save the drinks for celebrating after. Getting the meat off the bones is a matter of form. “With the flats, you grab it from the bigger side and you just pull through your teeth and all the meat will come off,” he said, adding that he approached the drums with a basic biting and turning method, like eating from a tiny, meaty corn cob. If a wing was too hot, he set it to the side and plowed through smaller, cooler wings first.
As for the pain, he said, “If you ate one wing, the damage is already done — why are you stopping? You might as well keep going.”
Having Reynolds there was key, too. “I couldn’t do it without her there though, helping with the baby for sure,” Gooch said.
“I feel like I have to be back next year to defend the title,” said Gooch, who wants to see what the chef will come up with. Anyone who comes for his crown had better be ready for a fight. “If I’m gonna do anything,” he said, “I’m going to do it 100 percent.”
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the arts and features editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 320, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.
This article appears in Youngest North Coast Condor Dies of Lead Poisoning.
