Myron Mixon: 5x World Champion, BBQ Hall of Famer, and the Man Who Changed Competition BBQ

There are pitmasters, and then there is Myron Mixon. In the world of competitive barbecue — a world of smoke-stained trophies, sleepless nights tending fires, and judges who’ve tasted everything — no one has ever done it quite like the man from Vienna, Georgia. Five world championships. More than 200 grand championships. Over 1,700 trophies. These aren’t just numbers; they’re the résumé of a man who didn’t just compete in barbecue — he redefined what winning it looks like.

Smoke in the Blood

Myron Mixon was born on May 30, 1962, in Vienna, Georgia, a small town in the heart of the Deep South where barbecue isn’t a hobby — it’s a way of life. His father, Jack Mixon, was the one who lit the first fire. Jack ran a barbecue sauce business out of the family home, and young Myron grew up watching him work the pit with the kind of quiet mastery that can’t be taught in a class or learned from a book. It was passed down the way all great things are — through time, proximity, and love.

When Jack Mixon passed away, Myron made a decision that was equal parts tribute and declaration: he would carry his father’s legacy into the competitive arena. He named his company Jack’s Old South, a name that honors the man who gave him everything he needed to succeed. Every trophy Mixon has ever won, every grand championship banner he’s ever hoisted, carries a piece of his father’s name with it. That’s not sentiment — that’s the foundation of everything.

In 1996, Mixon entered his first competition in Atlanta. He didn’t ease into it. He won first place in whole hog and took third in pork shoulder. For most people, that debut would be a career highlight. For Mixon, it was just the beginning — a proof of concept that the lessons learned in his father’s backyard could hold up against the best in the country.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

If you want to understand Myron Mixon’s dominance, start with Memphis in May — the Super Bowl of competitive barbecue, the event where reputations are made and legends are cemented. Mixon has won the Grand Championship there five times: 2001, 2004, 2007, 2016, and 2021. That last title came nearly two decades after his first, a testament not just to raw talent but to an obsessive, evolving mastery of the craft. Winning Memphis in May once puts you in elite company. Winning it five times puts you in a category of one.

The broader record is staggering. Over 200 grand championships across competitions spanning the country. Thirty state championships. Eight Team of the Year awards. More than 1,700 trophies — a number so large it strains comprehension until you picture the room you’d need to store them all. And then there’s the near-miss that still stings in the lore of the sport: at the prestigious Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue in 2004, Mixon finished runner-up by just 0.1 points. A tenth of a point. In any other sport, that margin would be a footnote. In competitive BBQ, it’s the kind of detail that gets whispered about for years.

What separates Mixon from the field isn’t just frequency of winning — it’s the consistency across categories and decades. Competition barbecue is a sport where variables multiply: weather, wood, meat quality, judge subjectivity. Mixon has navigated all of it, year after year, with a methodical precision that his competitors have spent careers trying to decode.

Bringing BBQ to the Masses

For all his competition success, Mixon’s reach extended far beyond the circuit when he stepped in front of the camera. His appearances on BBQ Pitmasters — the hit series that aired on TLC and later Destination America — brought competitive barbecue into living rooms across America. Alongside fellow legends Aaron Franklin and Tuffy Stone, Mixon served as both judge and contestant, a dual role that showcased not just his cooking ability but his authority as a voice in the sport.

On television, Mixon was exactly what you’d expect: direct, confident, and unsparing in his assessments. He didn’t soften his critiques for the camera, and audiences responded to that authenticity. Here was a man who had earned the right to have opinions, and he wasn’t shy about sharing them. The show introduced a generation of backyard cooks to the standards and techniques of elite competition BBQ, and Mixon was its most compelling ambassador.

His three cookbooks extended that reach even further. Smokin’ with Myron Mixon (2011) became an instant classic in the genre, translating competition-level technique into accessible home cooking. Everyday Barbecue followed in 2013, and Myron Mixon’s BBQ Rules arrived in 2016 — each one a distillation of hard-won knowledge, written for readers who wanted more than recipes. They wanted to understand the why behind the smoke.

Beyond the Pit

Myron Mixon has never been content to exist only in the competition world. His brand, Jack’s Old South, grew from a family sauce business into a full-fledged BBQ empire — one that encompasses competition teams, products, and a reputation that opens doors across the industry. The name his father built became the name that defined a dynasty.

In January 2016, Mixon added an unlikely title to his résumé: mayor of Unadilla, Georgia. It was a role that spoke to his roots and his standing in the community — a man who had traveled the country collecting trophies but never forgot where he came from. The same year he was elected mayor, he also won his fourth Memphis in May title. Not a bad year by any measure.

In May 2025, Mixon opened Myron Mixon BBQ in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, bringing his competition-caliber cooking to a restaurant setting in one of the South’s most visited destinations. It’s the kind of move that makes sense for a man who has spent decades perfecting his craft — a chance to share it not just with judges and competitors, but with anyone who walks through the door hungry.

The Standard

Myron Mixon’s induction into the BBQ Hall of Fame wasn’t a surprise — it was an inevitability. The question was never whether he belonged; it was simply a matter of when the institution would catch up to the record. His career has been a sustained argument for what’s possible when talent meets discipline meets an almost unreasonable competitive drive.

What Mixon has done for competition barbecue goes beyond his own trophy case. He raised the standard. He showed what a professional approach to the craft looked like — the preparation, the consistency, the refusal to accept a single bad cook as acceptable. Competitors who came up watching him had to get better just to stay in the conversation. That’s the mark of a true dominant force: not just winning, but elevating everyone around you.

In a sport defined by fire and patience, Myron Mixon has been both the flame and the slow burn — relentless, transformative, and impossible to ignore. The trophies will eventually gather dust. The legacy won’t.