Champion Deals in Lingerie

“And in this corner, in the lace trunks . . .”

Michael Bent had better get used to jibes such as that if he intends to continue in his current line of work.

Bent, America’s best amateur heavyweight boxer and winner of the gold medal in the recent Sports Festival at Baton Rouge, La., sells lingerie at a New York boutique.

Honest.

“A friend of mine who worked there talked me into coming down one day to keep him company,” Bent, 19, told Newsday’s Dave Rosner. “I saw all these lovely women coming in. I said, ‘This is work? You didn’t tell me about this.’ I said, ‘Man, I gotta work here.’ I’ve been working there a few days a week for a year and a half now.

“It gets pretty hairy sometimes. This one beautiful lady walked in and said, ‘Do you have any leather garter belts?’ I just said, ‘No, ma’am, you’ll have to go down the street for that.’ We just carry dresses, jewelry, lingerie. . . . I don’t hit on any of the women, though. When I’m there, it’s strictly business.”

Needless to say, Bent, who also is in the habit of going horseback riding in Forest Hills every Sunday, is not your typical boxer.

“All of this stuff breaks up the monotony,” he said. “If you eat, sleep and drink boxing 24 hours a day, I think you’re going to go mad.”

Trivia Time: The Rams officially have retired only one number during their 40 years in Los Angeles: Merlin Olsen’s 74. But two others have been retired unofficially. Whose were they?

And the Winner Is: Slippery Rock University, poking fun at schools that use all kinds of gimmicks to hype their Heisman Trophy candidates, is urging the consideration of running back Chuck Sanders for this year’s award.

Among other things, Slippery Rock has thought about publishing a new pronunciation guide that enables Sanders’ name to rhyme with Heisman, and peddling a key chain that, when tilted in proper sequence, shows Sanders rushing for a touchdown.

Parity and the PGA: Forecasting the winner of the 67th PGA Championship beginning this week at Cherry Hills Country Club in Denver will be no easy matter.

So far, the 31 PGA Tour tournaments played this year have produced 23 winners, with only Lanny Wadkins, Curtis Strange, Mark O’Meara, Bernhard Langer and Calvin Peete winning more than once.

Even more surprisingly, a total of 119 golfers have at least one Top 10 finish to their credit in 1985.

The No-Eat Clause: William (The Refrigerator) Perry, the Chicago Bears’ first-round draft choice and the team’s most celebrated weight watcher, has ended a two-week holdout and signed a four-year contract.

The $1.4 million contract has some curious conditioning clauses that, according to Pery’s agent, Jim Steiner, make payment partly dependent upon the defensive tackle’s weight, body fat, strength and endurance.

Perry, 22, has been the focus of much attention because of his weight, which climbed to 360 pounds in college. He is listed in the Bears’ media guide as 6-2 and 318 pounds.

“We would like people to perceive him as a football player and not someone with a weight problem,” Steiner said. “He is a big guy and he’s always going to be a big guy.”

Trivia Answer: Bob Waterfield’s No. 7 and Elroy Hirsch’s No. 40. Equipment manager Don Hewitt and his predecessor, Bill Granholm, have taken it upon themselves not to issue those numbers since Waterfield and Hirsch retired in 1952 and 1957, respectively.

Quotebook

Sparky Anderson, on Casey Stengel’s innovative use of the English language: “He (Casey) used the double-talk as a ploy to avoid answering questions he didn’t want to answer. You could be listening to Casey when he was in that mood, go away, come back three hours later and he’d still be talking, unaware you had even gone.”