(Photo: Patrick McMullan)

Eileen Guggenheim can tell you how to wrangle a sumo wrestler. Despite her famous name, that was her job at the New York Academy of Art’s “Take Home a Nude” event, where the wrestlers were to greet guests like Paul Rudd, Simon de Pury, and Elie Tahari. Where’d she find them? “The Internet!” How do you get a sumo wrestler to do charity work? “I called them up and offered a free meal at Old Homestead Steakhouse if they came.” Once she met the wrestlers and recognized their apparent meat-consumption potential, she specified “just one steak apiece, because what if they eat four steaks each? It’s possible!” Manny “Tiny” Yarbrough, a New Jersey native whose weight hovers around 700 pounds, seemed content with the work-for-food arrangement. “We have to have some motivation for doing an event like this,” he says. Even when it’s for a good cause? “Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s just cool to meet all these people.” In addition to one steak each, the wrestlers had shrimp cocktail, crabmeat cocktail, and some Grand Marnier to wash it down. “They enjoyed a fair amount,” says Guggenheim.

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Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Emma Rosenblum
• Table of Contents: Nov 13, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!