For four glorious days, the annual Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is like the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras and the Fourth of July all rolled into one – a smoke-infused celebration of swine that attracts more than 100 teams from across the United States, Canada, Mexico and even Norway.

None of those teams, though, has a more decorated history at Memphis in May than the crew from Alabama’s legendary Big Bob Gibson’s Bar-B-Q in Decatur.

The Big Bob Gibson gang won its first Memphis in May title on its inaugural trip to Memphis in 1997, capturing first-place honors in the sauce category — not for its famous Original White Sauce, which the late Bob Gibson invented, but for its sweet and spicy Championship Red Sauce.

Just three years later, the team from Decatur brought home the first of five Grand Champion titles, the top prize at Memphis in May, and repeated that feat in 2003, 2011, 2014 and 2017, when they became the first-ever five-time Grand Champion. (The Jack’s Old South competition team later tied their record in 2021.)

Just as impressive, though, are the 12 first-place finishes for best shoulder – including a streak of six in a row from 1999 to 2004 – that the Big Bob Gibson team had won entering Memphis in May 2025.

That’s a Nick Saban type of dynasty.

But just as it has been going on five seasons since the Crimson Tide football team last won a national championship, eight years have passed since the Big Bob Gibson team’s last Grand Champion win.

And after coming within a few tenths of a point of winning it all in 2024, the Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q crew set its sights on making history and winning their sixth world championship this year.

Here is their story.

The team arrives

Since they racked up another yet first place in shoulder in 2024 and narrowly missed out on winning the whole thing, fourth-generation pitmaster Chris Lilly and his Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q competition team decided to make only a few minor tweaks to their cooking process this year.

Rather than change it, they would perfect it.

Six months before the contest (which was held May 14-17 at Liberty Park in Memphis), Chris selected the pignut hickory wood that he would use to flavor the meat from his trusted wood purveyor and kept it in dry storage until it was time for the competition.

“We want a nice, smooth smoke that gives added flavor to the pork,” he says. “And it starts with what wood you use and how long you season it.”

He waited until closer to the competition to make sure he got the best shoulders available, choosing a Compart Duroc heritage breed with reddish-pink coloring and the right amount of marbling.

Some members of the Big Bob Gibson team got here on the Monday of festival week to set up tents and park the rigs at their site, which just happens to be on Alabama/Bear Bryant Street on the Liberty Park grounds.

By Wednesday, all of the key members of the pit crew – Chris; his sons Jacob and Andrew; seasoned competition barbecue veteran Danny “Big D” Montgomery of Ramer, Tenn.; and Sam Alleyne of New York City — have made it and start prepping for some of the festival’s preliminary events.

The competition begins

The competition starts to heat up –- literally and figuratively — on Friday with the Kingsford Tour of Champions, a people’s choice-type event that allows festival attendees to judge some of the competing teams and serves as a good tune-up for the main event on Saturday.

“Let me start out by telling you a little bit about us,” Chris tells the first of three groups of judges that day. “We’re Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q. We’re from Decatur, Ala.

“My wife Amy’s great-grandfather started the restaurant in 1925, and you’re looking at fifth-generation pitmasters and restaurateurs right here,” he adds, pointing to his boys Jacob and Andrew.

“Let’s think about it, folks. One hundred years. This is our anniversary, so we’re so pleased that y’all could come share this with us and come visit the family on this day.”

The judges feast on a pork shoulder, shrimp and andouille sausage gumbo; mac and cheese; and a smoked pork shoulder like those the Big Bob Gibson team will serve on Saturday to the WCBCC judges.

“We’re gonna give you samples right off the pit up here,” Chris continues. “I’m gonna put so much food on you that by the time you get to the next team, you’re not gonna be hungry. Just vote for us and go home.”

Afterward, one of the Kingsford judges, Steve Klesker from Chicago, says he has heard all about Big Bob Gibson barbecue for years, but this is his first time eating it.

“Congratulations,” he tells Chris and the crew. “I think you guys are gonna do it again.

“The history, the skills, the accolades, the awards – it all comes through in the food,” Klesker adds. “It’s world-class.”

Firing up the cooker

After feeding and entertaining three groups of 30-plus Kingsford judges, brothers Jacob and Andrew Lilly fire up the tried-and-true rotisserie pit that the Big Bob Gibson crew has used since that first trip to Memphis in 1997.

On the floor of the cooker, they have strategically placed small pieces of that seasoned pignut hickory wood on top of a ring of Kingsford charcoal briquettes, which will slowly burn like a lit fuse throughout the night.

Chris has injected the shoulders with an apple juice brine and patted with a dry rub like the one they use at their two Decatur restaurants.

Once they put them in the cooker and close the lid, the shoulders will cook uninterrupted for about 12 hours at around 225 degrees, basting in their own juices.

“I like to grab as much natural moisture from the meat during the cooking process,” Chris says. “All night long, you’ve got that fat dripping down into the coals, so you get sort of that old-school, pit-room flavor.”

A storm is brewing

Later in the afternoon, word gets around that the area is in a tornado watch, and that Memphis in May officials might have to shut down the festival site because of the possibility of severe weather that night.

Andrew checks the weather app on his phone and sees that the storms are expected to pass through around 9 o’clock, around the time they are supposed to put another shoulder on the fire in the likelihood they emerge from Saturday’s preliminary round of judging and make the finals.

He and his older brother joke about whether they may have to jump the fence and sneak back into the park if they are told they have to leave.

But it is not anything the Big Bob Gibson team hasn’t been through before.

In 2011, Chris recalls, they had to evacuate because of a tornado threat, and that year, all the Big Bob Gibson team did was win their seventh first-place shoulder trophy and third Grand Champion title.

So, adversity can sometimes be their friend.

“Barbecue,” Chris says. “There’s always something.”

Passing the torch

Weather permitting, Jacob and Andrew, who started coming to Memphis in May when they were little kids, will stay all night and babysit the shoulders with Sam Alleyne, who met Chris at the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in New York City more than a decade ago and has since become a regular member of the Memphis in May crew.

The first year Chris trusted his two sons to keep watch on the shoulders by themselves overnight, the boys not only aced the test, but the team also won its fifth Grand Champion title.

“In 2017, he gave my brother and I the reins, and our first year, we won Grand and first place in shoulder,” Jacob recalls. “And I think with that, dad was like, ‘All right, guys, you got the job officially from here on out.’”

A new day dawns

Except for some blustery winds, the Friday night storm never materialized, and none of the teams had to evacuate the site.

Chris, who spent the night in a hotel about 20 minutes away, comes back around 7:30 Saturday morning to check on the shoulders.

“Right now,” he says later, “I think we’re in a good position.”

Throughout the morning, festival attendees drop by the Big Bob Gibson site to get cell phone photos with Chris, who is a rock star on the competition barbecue circuit, revered by fans and respected by his competitors.

“All I do is cook barbecue,” he says of all the attention. “But yeah, it’s sort of crazy when you think about it.”

Around mid-morning, Don McLemore — Bob Gibson’s grandson and Chris’ father-in-law and mentor – arrives on the site with his wife, Carolyn.

Don and Carolyn have attended Memphis in May since that first trip in 1997, and although Don no longer cooks with the competition team, he and his wife are here to lend their support and help share the 100-year story of Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q.

Last year, Carolyn says, Don even came to the festival just a few days after leaving the hospital, where he had been admitted following a bad fall.

Jacob Lilly walks up to his grandfather to say hello.

“I’m ready,” Jacob tells him. “We’re due. I’m more excited this year than I was last year.”

Preparing for the judges

After the shoulders come off the cooker, Chris paints them with two different coats of glaze. The first seals in the moisture, and the second, a version of the commercial red sauce they serve and sell in their restaurants, makes the shoulders shine like a classic Corvette.

With the help of his sons and Danny Montgomery, Chris picks out three of the prettiest shoulders to present and serve to each of the three on-site judges.

He carefully pulls some of the best pieces of meat off the other shoulders and arranges them in neat rows inside an unmarked Styrofoam box for the blind judging part of the competition. They call that the “blind box.”

“I don’t get fancy with the blind box,” Chris says. “We let the meat speak for itself. I want a full box of the most tender, juicy, moist pork that I can get in there.”

Both sets of judges will score the shoulders on taste, tenderness, appearance and their overall impressions, but the on-site judges will get the added benefit of hearing Chris’ persuasive pitch.

Louis Coppedge — who is married to Chris’ sister-in-law, Donna – gets the honor of walking the blind box from the Big Bob Gibson site to the judges’ station, about a tenth of a mile away.

“The first year I came (in 2000), they let me take the blind box to the judges, and it was the first grand championship they won,” Louis recalls. “I tell everybody there was no way they were going to let me get away because I was the good-luck charm.”

Delivering the blind box

While her son-in-law and grandsons prepare the pork, Carolyn McLemore decorates a second, unlit smoker that Chris will use during his presentation to the judges.

She lays down a blanket of fresh kale on the top grid and accents it with a sliced pineapple, a purple cabbage and some red and yellow peppers, which will adorn the meat.

Amy, Chris’ wife, sets the table and arranges the chairs where the judges will sit while her husband makes his presentation.

At noon, Louis – flanked by Sam Alleyne on his right and John Wesley, who is dating Louis’ daughter, on the left – delivers the blind box to the judges’ station.

He holds onto the Styrofoam container with both hands and walks with the determined gait of a man on a mission.

“I didn’t drop it,” he says after emerging from the judges’ building. “You don’t want to walk back and say I dropped the box. You might as well keep walking.”

Here comes the judges

Around 12:15 Saturday afternoon, before the first on-site judges arrive, Amy reminds everyone to put their phones on silent. For extra precaution, Jacob switches his phone to airplane mode.

Chris has done his presentation hundreds of times before, and he’s so good at it, he makes every judge feel like he’s prepared it just for them.

The first judge tells him she has judged Memphis in May for 17 years, and he tells her how much he and the other contestants appreciate having veteran judges who know their barbecue.

She asks to peek inside the cooker to see where the magic happened, and Chris lifts the lid and goes into more detail about how he lets his shoulders create their own moisture as they cook.

“The cool thing about that is, they’re just dripping on top of each other and self-basting,” Chris says. “So, if you don’t taste a moist, juicy shoulder, I did not do my job. And I think we did.”

Then he takes a shoulder from the pit, brings it to the table and breaks it down in front of her.

“We feel really good,” Chris tells her. “We’ve been doing this a long time, but I’m confident that this shoulder is as good a shoulder as we’ve ever put out in competition.”

He repeats that presentation two more times and ends each one by raising a pewter goblet to toast the judges and thank them for their time.

“Let me thank you for helping Big Bob Gibson celebrate their 100th anniversary,” he tells the last judge. “Don’t be a stranger. . . . Come see me in Decatur, Ala. . . . Cheers to good friends and great barbecue.”

The waiting begins

Now, the wait begins for the preliminary scores to be tallied to see if they will be one of the three finalists for the best shoulder.

If they are, they will also be a contender to win the whole thing.

If not, as Andrew says, they might as well start packing up to go back home to Decatur.

“This is when you start getting nervous,” Andrew says.

Friends, and competitors

Birmingham chef Adam Evans — a 2022 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef: South and a member of the Ribdiculous Bar-B-Krewe team — wanders over from their site to visit with Chris and kill time while they wait on the results.

Adam has been part of the Ribdiculous crew since his New York City chef buddies Shane McBride and Damon Wise put together their all-star team to compete in their first Memphis in May in 2009.

Before that first year, Shane and Adam visited Chris at Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur to pick his brain, and several years later, Chris served the restaurant’s famous smoked chickens with Alabama white sauce at the rehearsal dinner for Adam’s wedding.

Then, two years ago, the Ribdiculous team won their first Grand Champion title after also finishing first in ribs.

This year, Adam and his team have entered the shoulder division, so he and his friend Chris are competitors.

They are pulling for each other, and in a perfect world, both their teams will make the finals.

While they wait, Chris gets a phone call from another one of the shoulder contestants who wants to know if Chris has heard anything.

“He’s in the same situation,” Chris says. “He’s just as nervous as we are.”

The wait is over

Finally, about two and a half hours after they served the last judge, the Big Bob Gibson team spots their ambassador, Memphis in May veteran Cheryl Kennedy, driving toward them in her golf car.

If she stops the car and starts walking their way, it’s a sure sign they have made finals.

Instead, though, she takes a right turn at the intersection just outside their site and heads in the opposite direction.

Then she stops the car, gets out and turns back towards them. She looks straight ahead and doesn’t make eye contact.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see them waiting nervously.

Then, mercifully, she turns toward them, and says, “Oh, all right.”

Jacob leaps off the ground and lets out a whoop, yelling, “Let’s go, baby!”

He and his dad exchange high-fives, while Cheryl presents Andrew with the WCBCC 2025 Shoulder Finals placard that they will proudly display on their site.

“This is when it’s fun,” Amy Lilly, after the celebration subsides.

Within a few minutes, she shares a video of their spontaneous celebration on the Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q Instagram account, which she updates throughout the weekend.

Cheryl, who knows the Big Bob Gibson team well from her many years as their Memphis in May ambassador, says later that she loves to mess with them.

“I have to,” she says. “They’re expecting it too much.”

They all breathe a collective sigh of relief.

“Oh man,” Jacob says, “this is why we do it.”

One final pitch

Chris is getting hoarse after his back-to-back-to-back presentations, but he has one more to go to impress the final-round judges.

Around 5:15, the team of four judges arrives in a golf car, and Chris gives them his fourth pitch of the day, saving his best for last.

He has 15 minutes, and the clock is ticking.

With five minutes to go, Louis Coppedge, who is off to the side and outside of view of the judges, motions to Chris to hurry up and wrap it up.

Chris, though, is on a roll, and his presentation runs about five minutes over, in part because the judges don’t seem to want to leave.

Jacob notices that one of them reaches for another bite of pork just as he is getting up to leave. They all take that as a good sign that he must have liked it.

Members of the Big Bob Gibson family – aunts, uncles, cousins, grandkids, most of them dressed in matching red-and-white BBG T-shirts — form two lines outside the gate of their site and applaud the judges as they leave.

“It’s hard to read some people, but the presentation was great, and the shoulder was perfect,” Andrew says. “It’s out of our hands now. We put it all out there. We’ll just see what they think.”

Winning never gets old

With nearly 100 finalists in more than 20 categories – all of whom are invited onstage for their moment in the spotlight, from the 10th place finishers to the first — the three-hour Memphis in May awards ceremony makes the Academy Awards seem streamlined.

It starts in daylight and ends in the dark.

Big Bob Gibson earns a second-place trophy in the Kingsford Tour of Champions from the day before – a nice honor, but not the one they are waiting for.

Finally, they get to the shoulder category.

When the emcee announces that second place goes to Team Waterdog, the Big Bob Gibson gang erupts, and Danny “Big D” Montgomery, as promised, dances a little jig.

Big Bob Gibson has just won its thirteenth first-place in shoulder. No other team in that category has ever won more than five.

Winning, though, never gets old.

Now, they will wait a little longer to see if they win that sixth Grand Champion title.

Their best shot

It is not to be.

Heath Riles BBQ from Olive Branch, Miss. – who had won first place in ribs two previous times and vowed to keep coming back to Memphis in May until he won the top prize — not only captures his third ribs title but also his first Grand Champion win.

Backstage, Chris waits for Riles to finish his acceptance speech and then offers his congratulations.

“He beat us, and it was well deserved,” Chris says later. “I know he’s worked for years on his ribs and on his dry rubs and his flavor profile, and it all came together.”

It takes Chris more than a half-hour to walk back to their site, as it seems like everybody wants to stop and congratulate him on Big Bob Gibson’s big haul.

Back at their site, Chris, his boys and their teammates Danny and Sam talk about what they might have done differently.

They decide not a thing.

“We put out an outstanding pork shoulder, probably one of the best we’ve put out in competition,” Chis says later. “For Heath Riles to beat us with the ribs, you just have to shake a man’s hand and tell him congratulations.”

They already have their sights set on 2026, when their quest to win that sixth Grand Champion title and make a little Memphis in May history will continue.

“I’ll tell you this,” Chris says. “Next year, we’re going to be giving the judges that exact same shoulder, and we’ll see what happens.”