in 10 minutes, Thomas earned the inaugural Pink Belt and won $10,000. Thomas had won 1st place in the National Buffalo Wing Festival US chicken wing eating championship five-years straight from 2007–2011. On September 4, 2011, she attained the United States Chicken Wing Eating Championship in Buffalo, New York by eating 183 chicken wings in 12 minutes. On September 2, 2012 Joey Chestnut consumed 191 wings (7.61 pounds) in 12 minutes to take competitive-eating trophy from the five-year champion Sonya Thomas. Challenge and response When Thomas undertook a challenging schedule of three contests in three cities on Labor Day weekend 2005, she had not lost a contest to anyone besides Kobayashi since the Wing Bowl in early February. Several last-minute victories foreshadowed that her streak would not last forever. At the Buffalo Wing Festival in Buffalo, NY, Ms. Thomas lost to Eric "Badlands" Booker in a chicken wing contest and then lost a waffle eating contest in Atlanta the next day to the fast-rising rookie Joey Chestnut, giving her a two event losing streak to replace her winning streak. Thomas' waffle defeat was avenged on Labor Day, however, when she out-ate Chestnut in the Chattanooga, TN Krystal Square Off qualifier. Thomas ate 57 Krystal Burgers to Chestnut's 56. Before the GoldenPalace.com turkey eating contest in New York City Thanksgiving Eve, Thomas had gone three months without winning a non-qualifying contest, although she did have two impressive victories in qualifiers during that span. It appeared that Chestnut would soon claim the title of the leading American eater from Thomas. The civil engineering student from San Jose State had defeated Thomas in three of their last four match-ups and was the first eater to lead Kobayashi for the majority of a contest at the Krystal Square Off in Chattanooga the previous week. Although Thomas came in third, the silver lining was her domination of Kobayashi on a pound for pound basis: Thomas 56 burgers / 100 lb. = 0.56, Kobayashi 67 burgers / 170 lb. = 0.39. At the turkey contest, Thomas was able to dramatically reverse her recent slump and defeat Chestnut without last second heroics, which she had not been able to do since Nathan's hot dog contest on July 4. Thomas' momentum continued the following week at a meatball contest in Atlantic City. Her total of 10 lb. 3 oz. beat Chestnut by two pounds and almost doubled her