A horn blared. Now it was butterfly vs. beast in the final two-minute sprint of the contest, which had begun with 29 contestants - including one who was ousted for shoving his own vomit back in his mouth. As a judge noted: "If you heave, you leave."
If Simmons was hungry for the title of champion chicken eater - snatched from his maw a year ago by Thomas, an out-of-towner a third his size - the roaring crowd of onlookers was ravenous.
"This," the South Jersey truck driver said before the face-off, "is my Super Bowl."
And with every wing he devoured, the stands exploded.
"Wing-A-Dor! Wing-A-Dor!"
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Ed Wickersham watched the action from a prime seat left of the stage. He had arrived at the Wachovia Center at 8:30 the night before to be sure of getting in. The only other people in the lot were four guys in a U-Haul.
"The people just kept coming," he said. "They were cooking on grills, doing a lot of drinking."
Mitch Blackman and his crew at the Rib Ranch in the Northeast were cooking, too, making 7,000 wings for the contest.
"This is outrageous," Blackman said, looking out from the stage.
By 5 a.m. yesterday, the streets around the South Philadelphia sports complex looked like rush hour. A raucous strand of fans, stretched across several parking lots, stood in an icy drizzle waiting to get in.
Dave Alvarez and Albert Quiles, both of the Northeast, couldn't get past the barricades police erected at the base of the Interstate 95 off-ramp, so their ride dropped them a 15-minute walk away.
After Wing Bowl, they were flying to Jacksonville, Fla.
"We wanted to start the festivities early," Alvarez said.
