Will This Be a Great Fight or Track Meet?

Julio Cesar Chavez, who will fight Pernell Whitaker Sept. 10 in San Antonio for Whitaker’s World Boxing Council welterweight championship, told Ron Borges of the Boston Globe that Whitaker has an ugly style.

“He is a southpaw and he has that strange squat, so I am preparing for a difficult fight,” Chavez said. “I’ll fight whatever style he wants, but I know the first time he gets hit hard, he will run around the ring. When he feels the power of Chavez’s punches, he will run and act like a clown.

“I hope he stands and fights, because to defeat me he has to fight. He can’t beat me clowning around and running.”

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Trivia time: What was the last major league team to win 100 games and not win a division title?

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Game plan: Bill Parcells, the new coach of the New England Patriots, comes across as a tough, no-nonsense type. Asked to identify the last book he read, Parcells said: “Victory Secrets of Attila the Hun.”

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Omen? When the Giants lost a three-game series to the Atlanta Braves this week, Tom Friend of the New York Times wrote: “The San Francisco Giants did not move to Florida, but they still might be headed South.”

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Try again: Knox College of Galesburg, Ill., has chosen a new nickname, Prairie Fire, to replace Siwash, after learning the word is offensive to American Indians.

“No other college in the country is nicknamed Prairie Fire,” Knox President John P. McCall said.

Probably for good reason.

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For what it’s worth: The Rams, who play the Raiders tonight in their final exhibition, haven’t been winless in the exhibition season since the franchise moved here from Cleveland in 1946.

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Priorities: Iowa’s football media guide includes a 10-page section on Hayden Fry and 22 pictures of the coach. The president of the university, Hunter Rawlings III, rated one line.

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Linford who? Britain’s Linford Christie had added incentive in his $300,000, 100-meter match race with Carl Lewis earlier this summer, which he won.

On the day of the race, Art Spander, writing a guest piece in the London Daily Telegraph, said: “The issue in the U.S. today is not whether Carl Lewis will beat Linford Christie. The issue is: Who is Linford Christie?”

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It’s gone, or is it? New York Yankee broadcaster Phil Rizzuto describing a long fly ball by Mike Stanley that was caught: “And that ball is out of here. No, it’s not. Yes, it is. No, it’s not. What happened?”

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Oops: A headline in the Detroit Free Press preceding the PGA Championship at the Inverness course in Toledo, Ohio: “Why the U.S. Open course is so special.”

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Trivia answer: The Baltimore Orioles, who went 100-62 in 1980, and finished three games behind the New York Yankees in the American League East.

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Quotebook: Lou Duva, Pernell Whitaker’s manager, using the new math to explain the fight with Julio Cesar Chavez: “This fight is going to to be 90% mental and 50% physical.”