L.A. Beast’s biography, net worth, fact, career, awards and life story

Kevin Strahle (born January 6, 1984), better known as the L.A. Beast, is a professional competitive eater who hosts a challenge-based channel on YouTube. Strahle started making videos in Los Angeles, California before moving back to his hometown of Ridgewood, New Jersey, and eventually to Santa Monica, California. As of December 2016, his channel has over 1.7 million subscribers, over 244 million total views, and is the 1,488th most subscribed channel on YouTube. In addition to his online presence, he has made appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Today Show Australia and Tosh.0. Strahle is well known for his extreme endurance in lengthy, painful, and seemingly incompletable challenges.
In 2015, Strahle led a successful campaign to bring back the soft drink Crystal Pepsi.

Early life

Strahle was born on January 6, 1984 and grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

As a child, Strahle developed a love for eating and later used his natural bulk to join the football team at Ridgewood High School. It was there he learned the value of goals and his signature never-give-up attitude. In his free time he would often accept money from his classmates to complete outrageous food challenges.

After high school, Strahle was recruited to play football for the Fordham Rams of Fordham University in New York. In his four years on the team, he started on the offensive line in almost every game for the 2004-2006 seasons.

In 2008, Strahle moved to Los Angeles and obtained a job working for Pepsi. After two years of service, he quit after a manager told him he wasn’t “persistent enough” to be a salesman within PepsiCo. That criticism would later drive him to spearhead the ‘Bring Back Crystal Pepsi’ campaign.

Internet videos

While Strahle was in Los Angeles, he uploaded his first YouTube video where he performed a milk chugging challenge. Noticing the positive response the video received, he started his own channel under the user name “skippy62able”. Having completed Fatburger’s XXXL burger challenge, Strahle’s roommate commented that he was ‘a beast’ for finishing it so fast. Starting in 2011, Strahle would often refer to himself as either “Beast” or “L.A. Beast”, eventually choosing the latter as his official nickname.

In September 2015, Strahle and fellow eaters Takeru Kobayashi, Bob Shoudt, Patrick Bertoletti and Tim Brown assembled in Chicago, Illinois to consume an entire cooked goat. This eating challenge was performed with the intention of lifting the infamous Chicago Cubs curse. The Cubs would go on to win the World Series the following year.

In January 2016, Strahle announced his intention to be the fastest person to walk across the continental United States.

Competitive eating

In November 2011, Strahle competed in his first professional eating contest at the Wild Turkey 81 Eating World Championship in New York City.

In 2012, Strahle was ranked the 16th best competitive eater in the world, and ranked 17th in 2013 respectively.

In June 2012, Strahle consumed 25 hot dogs in 10 minutes at the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest qualifier in Cleveland, Ohio. Though Strahle lost to eating veteran Crazy Legs Conti, he was beat by only a quarter of a hot dog.

In February 2016, Strahle competed at Wing Bowl 24 where he ate a cactus live on stage. To qualify for the competition, Strahle ate 24 raw eggs in under four minutes.

“Bring Back Crystal Pepsi” movement

In April 2015, Strahle rallied his fans to comment on Pepsi’s official social media accounts with the hashtag “#BringBackCrystalPEPSI” in an effort to revive the once-popular soft drink. This led to the creation of a Change.org petition and as of August 2016, it has over 34,000 signatures. The popularity of the movement also produced 15 billboards placed all around the Los Angeles area.

On June 8, 2015, Strahle received a message from Pepsi via Twitter, acknowledging his efforts to get Crystal Pepsi brought back to store shelves and hinting at the soft drink’s potential return. The next day, a Pepsi spokeswoman confirmed the message’s authenticity.

On July 26, 2015, Strahle released a song on iTunes called “The Crystal Pepsi Song” featuring production company That’s Classic Media. A music video was later released August 5, 2015.

On December 8, 2015, Pepsi announced the re-release of Crystal Pepsi in a limited quantity sweepstakes. On June 2016, Pepsi announced that Crystal Pepsi will be released in the US on August 8, 2016 for an eight-week run.

Notable challenges

Eating

• Two cacti
• The entire menu of burgers from the Burger King menu while wearing a shock collar
• A 5-pound bag of Haribo sugarless gummy bears
• Two jars of Vegemite
• An entire watermelon, including the rind
• 2 Chocolate Bhutlah Peppers
• 21 dimes covered in olive oil
• A 72-ounce steak meal in less than an hour
• A cluster of bananas and drinking two liters of Sprite
• An entire pineapple
• Two wooden pencils
• 27 ghost peppers, including A video from 2011.
• 110 McDonalds Chicken Nuggets
• 50 cloves of raw garlic in four minutes

Drinking

• Drinking a 20-year-old bottle of Crystal Pepsi
• A gallon of honey while covered with bees
• A mixture of milk and Red Bull from a 3-liter beer glass
• Two liters of Sprite and a cluster of bananas
• A gallon of Habanero Tabasco sauce
• Approximately 3 pounds of Sriracha
• An entire bottle of Cristal Champagne
• 24,000 calories worth of olive oil from a 3-liter beer glass
• 50 raw eggs in two and a half minutes
• A gallon of curdled milk

Other Stunts

• Inserting his hand into a jar full of hot ice
• Placing his hands inside gloves filled with bullet ants for 10 minutes
• Solving a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded while walking barefoot over a large pile of Lego bricks
• Trying to cross a butter-covered floor with an armful of presents
• Inhaling various vaporized alcoholic beverages
• Ripping 30 phone books in half in 3 minutes

• “Here’s an 8-Minute Video of a Man Eating Not One, but Two Whole Cacti”. Phoenix New Times. Retrieved March 4, 2015. 
• ^ “This Video of a Guy Chugging Hot Sauce Shows Exactly Why You Should Never Chug Hot Sauce”. TIME. Retrieved March 4, 2015. 
• ^ “A Special Hell Awaits The Guy Who Attempts To Drink A Gallon Of Tabasco Sauce”. Huffington Post. Retrieved March 4, 2015. 
• “Watch this guy eat every Burger King burger in one sitting, and survive”. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 2, 2015. 
• “In Whopper of a Challenge, Watch a Guy Eat Every Burger on the Burger King Menu in 24 Minutes”. TIME. Retrieved March 4, 2015. 
• ^ “[Internet Roundup] Meet Eating Machine Kevin Strahle, The LA Beast”. CBS Local. Retrieved March 3, 2016. 
• ^ “Watch ‘L. A. Beast’ Eat All 11 Burger King Burgers”. Inquisitr. Retrieved March 3, 2016. 
• “Man Gets Sick After Eating 5 lb Bag of Sugarless Gummy Bears”. KLAQ 95.5FM El Paso. Retrieved March 2, 2015. 
• “Kev’s review of “Haribo Gummi Candy Gold-Bears, 5-Pound Bag““. Amazon.com. Retrieved March 7, 2015. 
• “Vegemite eating YouTube challenge goes viral after man eats two Vegemite jars in three minutes”. News.com.au. Retrieved March 2, 2015. 
• “Watch A Guy Called The L.A. Beast Eat An Entire Watermelon, Skin And All”. Food Republic. Retrieved March 7, 2015. 
• “Man Has an Extreme Reaction After Eating Two Insanely Hot Chocolate Bhutlah Peppers”. Laughing Squid. Retrieved November 22, 2013. 
• “L.A. Beast Rushed to the ER After Eating 21 Dimes”. Yahoo!. Retrieved September 13, 2015. 
• “THE BIG TEXAN STEAK RANCH HALL OF FAME” (PDF). Big Texan Steak Ranch. Retrieved September 14, 2015. 
• ^
• ^ “Competitive Eater L.A. Beast Takes On The Banana And Sprite Challenge”. Mediaite. Retrieved March 4, 2015. 
• “Man tries to beat world record for eating garlic in Youtube video”. Daily Star. Retrieved December 21, 2016. 
• “Do Not Drink A 20-Year-Old Crystal Pepsi. Here’s Why.”. Uproxx. Retrieved March 3, 2015. 
• “Watch What Happens When This Dude Pounds A 20-Year-Old Crystal Pepsi”. CinemaBlend. Retrieved March 4, 2015. 
• ^ “SEE IT: Competitive eater L.A. Beast drinks gallon of honey while covered in bees”. New York Daily News. Retrieved March 3, 2015. 
• “Man Covers His Face In Bees And Tries To Down A Gallon Of Honey”. BuzzFeed. Retrieved March 7, 2015. 
• “Redbull and Milk Challenge Becomes The Latest Vomit-Inducing YouTube Trend”. NewMediaRockStars.com. Retrieved March 4, 2015. 
• “Dumb Jock Chugs Bottle of Cristal to Protest Occupy Wall Street”. Gawker. Retrieved March 6, 2015. 
• “The Top Young, Up-And-Coming Eaters”. CBS Local Media. Retrieved August 23, 2015. 
• “4 Eating Challenges that Could Legally Be Defined as Torture”. CBS Local. Retrieved March 6, 2016. 
• “Here’s what happens when you try to chug a gallon of curdled milk”. Daily Star. Retrieved December 21, 2016. 
• “This may well be one of the most idiotic things we’ve ever seen”. Independent.co.uk. Retrieved March 4, 2015. 
• “L.A. BEAST vs The Worst Pain Known To Man (Ft. LA FENIX)”. YouTube. Retrieved September 13, 2015. 
• “Blindfolded Dude Solves Rubik’s Cube in 3 Min (While Walking Barefoot Over LEGOS)”. YouTube. Retrieved November 7, 2015.