A 2,749-Pound Pumpkin Named “Michael Jordan” Broke a World Record

The record for world’s largest gourd is back in American hands!

The World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off was on Monday near San Francisco.  And the winner was a 2,749-pound pumpkin grown in Minnesota.

The previous record was a pumpkin out of Italy.  It weighed in at 2,702 pounds back in 2021.  So this one was 47 pounds heavier.

Here are a few more nuggets on the NEW largest pumpkin ever grown:

1.  Its name is “Michael Jordan”. The guy who grew it named it after him because the year is 2023, Jordan wore #23, and he was hoping it might be the “greatest of all time.”

2.  That grower is 43-year-old Travis Gienger.  He teaches horticulture at Anoka Technical College near Minneapolis, and he’s been growing pumpkins since he was a teenager.  He also broke the American record last year with a 2,560-pound pumpkin. Here’s a video of him losing his damn mind when he found out he had the record:

It’s gourd-geous! This 2,749-pound pumpkin named Michael Jordan holds a new world record. pic.twitter.com/piKwOQ9s0e

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) October 10, 2023

3.  The payout is $9 a pound.  So he sold it for just under $25,000.  That would only net him around 10 grand, because it cost $15,000 to grow.  But he got an extra 30 grand for breaking the record.  So he made about $40,000.

4.  This was the 50th world championship.  The first was in 1974, when the winning pumpkin weighed just 132 pounds.  So this one was 20 times bigger than that.  They had to upgrade their scale this year just to weigh it.

5.  The pumpkins we use for jack-o-lanterns are around 10 pounds.  So it’s like 275 of those, and could make at least 687 pumpkin pies.

It’s also about as heavy as a walrus, a hippopotamus, or a Mazda Miata with two ACTUAL Michael Jordans sitting in it!