Leyla Leidecker, the loving wife of former WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman, is still as mad as a hornet about how referee Arthur Mercante Jr. handled her husband’s TKO 9 defeat Saturday night at Yankee Stadium.
“Maybe I should have punched him (Mercante) in the face,” Leidecker told the New York Daily News Sunday.
Leidecker was screaming for the bout to be halted after her hubby and aspiring rabbi Foreman slipped and fell on the ring canvas, severely hurting his right knee. The injury was so bad that Foreman had trouble standing erect let alone boxing and moving in his usual, elusive ring style.
See Alan Zeitlin NY Blueprint story on “Foreman losing title but gains respect.”
This article even quotes your humble correspondent who is, after all, slightly Jewish (mother’s grandmoter named Greenburg).
Mercante rejected the white towel of surrender hurled into the ring by Foreman’s chief second and let the bout continue until a body shot laid Foreman low in the ninth round.
Here’s what the incensed Leidecker told Tiny Tim Smith:
“They had to stop it,” she said. “He wasn’t in any condition to continue fighting. Why put him in the situation of getting hurt more? There was no use continuing. He wasn’t going to win. There was no miracle that was going to happen. What was the point? Maybe I should just punch the referee in his face.”
Puerto Rican icon Cotto was ahead on the scorecards and, as promoter Bob Arum said, it seemed clear he would win the fight by decision even without the painful Foreman injury.
Fighting to protect her spouse: Yuri Foreman’s model wife, Leyla Leidecker. Their love story began at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn (New York Daily News Photo)
But, from the viewpoint of world class welterweight contender Stevie “Two Pound” Forbes, Mercante did nothing wrong.
So fighter Forbes respectfully disagrees with Foreman’s lovely spouse.
“I thought Mercante did a good job of giving Yuri a chance,” Forbes said. “I understand the wife’s emotion and compassion but the referee can’t react like that. It wasn’t like Foreman had taken a brutal beating or anything like that. His knee just gave out on him.”
Forbes said a fighter can appreciate Mercante’s actions.
Battle in the House That Ruth Built (Or Steinbrenner Rebuilt), overhead shot of Miguel Cotto-Yuri Foreman taken by ubiquitous Chris Farina, Top Rank’s top shutterbug
“Yuri’s corner was looking out for him, throwing in the towel like they did but the ref was trying to give the champion the opportunity to work through his pain. Fighters, any fighter, can understand that viewpoint and, yeah, I know sometimes a fighter can be his own worst enemy but, like I say, Yuri was not taking any sort of brutal beating in there.”
Forbes has acquitted himself well in going the 12 round limit with such world champions as Oscar de la Hoya and unbeaten Andre Berto.
Forbes lives in the Detroit area and hopes to box on Don King’s August show in St. Louis.
(Michael Marley represents Stevie Forbes.)
