BBQ World Cup Qualifier: Mark Wetherell

For most of his years in competition barbecue, Mark Wetherell was a solo cook. An accountant by trade, he would load his smokers, drive to a contest, and work the categories alone through the night, his parents stopping by now and then. What he never planned was that the team he built by himself would carry his young daughter's name to the biggest stage the sport has ever set.

Maya Jane BBQ Co., out of Evans, Georgia, just outside Augusta, finished Reserve Grand Champion at the South Carolina Festival of Discovery in Greenwood and earned one of two spots into the first BBQ World Cup, where 100 teams from around the world will cook next April in Las Vegas for $1,000,000. Wetherell got there with Cristina beside him, in the rain, on a day he nearly missed.

A hobby that came off the television

Wetherell grew up around backyard grilling, his dad's Weber kettle in the yard, but the sport found him through the early seasons of the show BBQ Pitmasters. He was, by his own telling, a bored backyard cook out in the driveway who got hooked on the science of smoke and meat. By day he keeps the books for the Professional Disc Golf Association. On weekends he started chasing a harder game. He cooked a few unsanctioned local contests, then entered the big Papa Joe's BanjoBQ in Evans, a KCBS contest in his own backyard, and still grins about tying for around eleventh in pork that day and, the way he tells it, out-scoring the legendary Johnny Trigg in the category. He was about forty, a former competitive-sports guy who had found a new arena, and the bug had bitten.

The team named for Maya Jane

The warmest part of the story is the name, and it belongs to his daughter. When Maya Jane was a baby, back when the family lived in a Colorado apartment, she helped him put together his first electric smoker, and somewhere in that moment he made her a promise: whenever I open a restaurant, I will call it Maya Jane BBQ. The restaurant never came, and by now he is glad it did not. He caters here and there, and says he is happy right where he is. The name stuck to the team instead, a small tribute a father cooks under at every contest. It rides on the logo, and it rides on every trophy.

Cristina joins the trailer

For a long time Wetherell cooked alone. That changed when Cristina, his girlfriend, came into the sport. She teaches senior English at Greenbrier High School, and she caught the barbecue bug in the same place he did, off the old BBQ Pitmasters show. When Mark first mentioned that competition barbecue was his hobby, she lit up: wait, like the Pitmaster show? I know exactly what you do. She joined the team a couple of years ago and became his palate, the person who can taste a box and tell him what to turn in, and, just as important, talk him off the ledge. Their first win together came last October, another followed in January, and Mark no longer wants to be a solo cook. He needs someone in the trailer, he says, if only to tell him not to sauce the brisket.

Reserve Grand Champion, in a downpour

The Festival of Discovery in Greenwood is a hometown contest for them, about forty-five minutes from the house, a field of seventy-five teams Mark had cooked since 2018. This year he almost was not there at all. He had a health scare that week, in the hospital just days before, and nearly pulled out. When the ribs came due, a rainstorm blew in sideways, and it was Cristina who carried the box to the tent through it, no umbrella, a walk of a few minutes that felt a great deal longer. They were sure the cook was ruined. Instead they took third in brisket and a top-ten ribs finish, with no chicken or pork call, and as the top ten counted down they figured they had simply won a category. Then the announcer called Maya Jane BBQ Co. for Reserve Grand Champion. Cristina hit him in the chest, unable to believe it. Only Cocamoke Smoke BBQ, run by their friend Cody Turner, had finished ahead of them for Grand Champion. The best part, they both say, was the friends who crowded in to celebrate.

His people

Barbecue, for Wetherell, is a community as much as a craft. The field at Greenwood was full of friends: Joseph of Smoke Show Mafia, who finished third overall that day; Cody Turner of Cocamoke Smoke, who took the top spot; Ryan King of Kings BBQ, another cook headed to the World Cup; and Luke of Old Virginia Smoke, a friend already qualified for Vegas himself. He leans on neutral-palate neighbors as test subjects and trades help without keeping score. The pitmaster he calls the greatest of all time is Jason Singletary of Smoke Central, the one cook he would want in his corner if a single box decided everything. Cristina felt it right away: every single one of his friends accepted me with open arms, they are family. Their three kids, two girls and a boy with a seventeen-year-old and a twenty-year-old among them, do not compete. One turn at Kids Que in 2019 was enough, never doing this again. They still text first for the scores. Cristina's desserts have their own following, taste-tested by her coworkers, among them a butterscotch cheesecake that scored a perfect 180 in Atlanta and a runner-up cheesecake in Virginia.

The road to Vegas

Wetherell is honest that the BBQ World Cup is still a bit of a mystery to him. He knows the four-meat KCBS box cold: ribs are his favorite, cooked on a stick burner, sweet over vinegar, Kansas City through and through. The World Cup's international, open-fire, more culinary format is new ground, and he is equal parts intrigued and nervous. He runs Maya Jane on gear he knows down to the bolt, a team stocked by Royal Oak Charcoal, Recteq, Heath Riles BBQ, Chatel Farms, Springer Mountain Farms and the Atlanta BBQ Store, and he teaches the Recteq Academy classes himself. He has already learned the sport's hardest lesson the hard way, once disqualified for a paper towel left in a box: check, he says, then triple check. That care has stacked up Grand Champion wood, the Pro Grand Champion plaque from this year's Jimmy Jam BBQ Slam among it. If Maya Jane BBQ Co. were to win the $1,000,000, do not expect fireworks, because Mark is an accountant after all. He would invest, be responsible, pay the taxes, maybe add a smoker or two and a new trailer. What he wants most from Las Vegas is a beer and a brisket conversation with Aaron Franklin, whose brisket he would happily trade an afternoon to talk about over a beer, and a plate like the scallops over cheese grits at Abel Brown in Augusta that he still calls his best meal anywhere. What carried him here is the same thing that carries every cook who lasts: patience, the belief that barbecue is done when it is done and cannot be rushed. When they win, Cristina punches him in the arm and then they hug, and Mark goes quiet and still for five minutes, in disbelief, still feeling like the new guy.

Sources

Mark Wetherell and Cristina, Road to 1 Million qualifier interview with Shannon Pruitt (BBQ World Cup). BWC Qualified Pitmasters Tracker (Maya Jane BBQ Co., head cook Mark Wetherell, Reserve Grand Champion, South Carolina Festival of Discovery; Evans, Georgia). South Carolina Festival of Discovery (KCBS Master Series), Uptown Greenwood, South Carolina, July 2026: a 75-team field, two BBQ World Cup qualifying spots; Maya Jane BBQ Co. finished Reserve Grand Champion (second overall) behind Grand Champion Cocamoke Smoke BBQ (Cody Turner), with a third-place brisket and a top-ten ribs call. Team detail (the Maya Jane name origin, Cristina joining as palate and dessert cook, the BBQ Pitmasters origin, the Papa Joe's BanjoBQ start, the paper-towel disqualification, the sponsors and Recteq Academy teaching, the community of Smoke Show Mafia, Cocamoke Smoke, Kings BBQ and Old Virginia Smoke, and the Aaron Franklin dream cook) from the qualifier interview and the BBQ United team profile. Hero photo: Mark Wetherell and Cristina with their Maya Jane BBQ Co. Pro Grand Champion plaque, BBQ World Cup pitmaster program.