If there was ever any question that Russians are hyper competitive at everything, well, throw those doubts out the window. According to a story from THE KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA, via the blog PRAVDA, the champion of a recent pancake eating contest ate every single pancake thrown at him, then collapsed and died on stage after winning the contest outright. If that wasn’t drastic enough, this is: The revelers in the town of Chernyakhovsk, celebrating a holiday called “Butter Week”, kept on celebrating after the dead man was carted away.

(CC Sabathia: Unimpressed)

The story claims that 48-year-old Boris Isayev collapsed while walking up to receive his medal, suffocating with foam at his mouth. If you read between the lines, it sounds as if Isayev was literally filled up with pancake dough, all the way through his esophagus to his windpipe, precisely the type of condition that confirms what we’ve always known: Shaun Rogers and CC Sabathia would be beasts in Russian pancake eating contests.

It’s also possible that Isayev was just really hungry. Butter Week (Maslenitsa) is a meat-free week, and when was the last time you saw a Russian eat anything besides meat? The poor guy may not have eaten in a week, then he downs 48 pancakes? That’s a sure recipe for disaster.

(More Isayev, more!)

As much as this death may be a tragedy, it’s also a challenge. We’re fairly confident that, when they do come up with a total number of pancakes Isayev ate, “Badlands” Booker, “Eater-X” Janus and Kobayashi will have pancake eating on their docket for the next season. It says here Booker can eat where Isayev perished. U-S-A! U-S-A!