Inside the High-Stakes Competition of the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest

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How do you respond when, on a blisteringly hot afternoon, a six-foot-five man towers over you in an astroturfed canopy tent and asks “Are you ready to eat my awesome hog?”

If you’re like me, you stare back, eke out a shaky “y-yes,” and hope your knees don’t buckle.

When I did eventually taste his hog, it was indeed awesome.

Despite the ribald phrasing, this kind of question is not entirely uncommon at Memphis’s World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

Now in its 48th year, the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is one of the largest such competitions in the country—large enough, in fact, to earn the nickname “The Super Bowl of Swine” (don’t alert the highly litigious NFL, though). The four-day contest is a major event on the barbecue competition circuit, with more than $190,000 in prizes across categories like beef, exotics (like alligator, or emu, for instance), wings, and sauce.

Competing teams show off trophies of years past.

A pitmaster plates a course for judging in the live fire category of the competition.

It’s a friendly competition, pitmasters are quick to tell me. For some teams it’s simply a yearly opportunity to gather with friends and family. (Or an excuse to watch a bout or two of barbecue sauce wrestling.)

For others, winning is important. Very important. Not just for the thousands in prize money, not just for the potential sponsorships which will help defray the significant cost of competing, and not even for the opportunities to spin victory into a spice rub empire. Winning in one of the big three categories—ribs, shoulder, or whole hog—can secure you prestige, a following, and a fan base. And to take home a grand championship, the prize awarded to the winner in any category with the highest cumulative score, is to cement your name among the barbecue legends. It means you aren’t simply an amateur pitmaster. It means a legacy that will last long after you cease spending sleepless nights babysitting a slowly smoking hog.

My clothes begin to smell of barbecue smoke, and my skin quickly reddens under the inescapable Tennessee sun as I wander up and down the rows of competitors’ tents. I’m in the ribs section, where it’s hard to miss the largest tent, which belongs to Heath Riles, whose name has loomed large over these past few days. Many pitmasters brought up his name when I asked after the “serious” competitors. And for good reason: He’s won the ribs category the past two years, and he’s been competing in barbecue contests since he was 17. To take home a grand championship is a feat. To do it more than 80 times in competitions all over the country, as Riles has, is hard to comprehend.

In live fire cooking, pitmasters often cook the animal whole.

Today I’ve finally tracked down the man himself. But when I step into the massive Riles team tent, he isn’t ready to speak just yet. Latex-gloved, he needs to clean a few more ribs alongside 10 members of his team. So I sit with his wife, Candace, who tells me about the commitment it takes to live the life of a professional competitive barbecue champion. “We used to cook 30 to 40 weekends out of the year,” she says. “There were weddings we didn’t make it to, birthday parties—all the things, but also all that winning got us to where we are today. You know, the name…”

She trails off but she’s referring to the Heath Riles brand name, splashed across the team’s merch and blown up on the stanchion panels that border the tent. Riles’s name is bigger than competition barbecue.

Winning has afforded him opportunities to sell and market a line of spice rubs, sauces, glazes, seasonings, baths, brines, and injectables. Riles wasn’t the first competition barbecuer to start selling products commercially, but he’s one of the first, arguably, to perfect the process.

When it’s time to meet the man himself, he snaps off his latex gloves and gives me a handshake—as every man I’ve met this weekend has. He speaks with an accent, the kind that turns “foil” into a single syllable word, ”fawl.” Riles is a big man, but when he speaks, his face blossoms into a conspiratorial smile, and he leans in a bit as if he’s sharing a secret with only you. It’s not surprising to hear that he once worked in sales.

Today he’s feeling both confident about winning (“I cook a really good rack of ribs”) and nervous about defending his title ("It's a little bit of pressure, anxiety, whatever you want to call it”). He has reason to be nervous: A lot of eyes are on him as he defends his title, and, if he clinches this year’s grand championship, his second in as many years, he’ll be the first to do so since 1984. A truly legendary feat.

Young fans cheer on their team.

A chef adds a finishing touch to deviled eggs.

Many pitmasters are cooking beyond barbecue.

But he’s been preparing for months. He’s sorted through more than 100 racks of ribs to select those that he’d cook and submit for judging. He’s spent years tweaking and adjusting the ratios in his competition rub.

Now 42, Riles began barbecuing before he finished high school, he tells me, and it took him years to start winning contests. In 2013 he married Candace and also won his first grand championship title. The wins racked up after that, and soon his rubs started attracting attention. “I was putting them in Ziploc bags and other people started saying ‘hey, let me get some of that rub,’” he recalls. “I found a co-packer here in Memphis and they started doing it.” The run, he says, was just $1,200-worth of product. But the company has grown considerably since then. “It’s flipped us from barbecue to a full-time CPG and marketing company,” Riles says.

Riles’s company now employs 18 people, and as of May, the company’s grown 43% year over year, according to John Helms, director of sales and business insights, clocking slightly over $10 million in revenue in 2025. Riles’s products are distributed nationally—maybe you’ve seen them on the shelves of Walmart. “We’re on track to do $15 [million] easily in ‘26,” John says. “Between you and me, I think we’re going to exceed that.”

Quirky decor is everywhere at the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

The next step, he tells me, is to make Heath Riles a household name.

But for a lot of people, Riles already is a household name. “It’s hard for us to go anywhere anymore without him getting recognized,” Candace says. It’s not surprising considering Riles’s robust social media presence (boasting more than half a million followers across his social channels) and regular podcast appearances. He’s turned down gigs with Food Network four times due to competition conflicts, he says. They’ve built a second kitchen specifically for filming at home.

Three decades later Riles still seems to have a demitasse of the same wonder he had when he first heard about competitive barbecue in his high school days. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” he says. “They talked about Myron Mixon cooking with peach wood out of Georgia, and now we’re personal friends. It’s just really cool to have my name thrown in those conversations among people like him.”

Names are thrown around in this way all weekend. Myron Mixon; Robert “Big Bob” Gibson; Al Frugoni—these men who make up part of the pantheon of American barbecue—are spoken about as if you must already know them and their cooking. “Their swagger’s different when they walk,” one attendee says of these men.

Two budding barbecue aficionados enjoy their corndogs.

It’s been a long day of smoking, smiling, spieling judges, and taking pictures with fans. The ribs Riles has planned, prepped, and thought about for months have been judged blind and on-site, at a table specially set for the judges underneath his massive tent. The crew has paced, agonizing, until the judges inform them they’ve made the finals. And now, finally, it’s time to name the winner of the ribs category. There is a tight moment of tension and then…Heath Riles’s name is read out. An explosion of cheers on stage and off. The Riles team takes home their third consecutive win in the ribs category, and the audience applauds as team members pump their fists in victory.

But the night isn’t over. There is one last trophy to award. The grand championship, Riles’s chance to make history, is on the line.

The Riles team stands on the stage among the rest of the contenders, as they wait, tense-shouldered, for a winner to be declared. “Will the Heath Riles Barbecue Team win back to back Grand Champion?” the announcer asks the crowd. They cheer in response, eager to be a part of the incredible win, the win that’s been hanging over the entire weekend. The Riles team holds their towering, four-foot-tall first place ribs trophy. Heath and Candace hold up their oversize check. Forty two years is a long record to break. Longer than Riles has been barbecuing, even.

Team Swine & Dine cheers in the crowd.

Riles’s face is impassive, focused, as the announcer reads out the winner. Then, all of a sudden, his jaw drops open into a yell, he pumps his fist. “We got it!” one team member screams as the deafening cheers erupt on stage and off. Fireworks go off from behind the stage and congratulatory music plays. Riles’s employees—his teammates—pile onto him in one big hug. Riles has done it; he’s taken home two consecutive grand championships—the first to do so since the barbecue pioneer John Willingham set the record more than four decades ago. Someone hands a couple team members a trophy—somehow larger than their ribs trophy. They hold it up for the audience to see. Later, Riles will say he felt simply shocked in the moment, but it’s hard not to feel the second-hand pride.

The win secured, Riles is one step closer to legendary status. One step closer to barbecue Valhalla.