Yuri Foreman's wife Leyla Leidecker on Cotto fight: 'Maybe I should punch the referee

Don't mess with the boxer's wife - especially not if it's Leyla Leidecker, the wife of Yuri Foreman. Foreman lost his WBA super welterweight title on a ninth-round TKO to Miguel Cotto at Yankee Stadium Saturday night in a match that Leidecker insists that referee Arthur Mercante should have stopped. She claims Mercante should have halted the fight in the seventh round after her husband slipped on the wet canvas and twisted his right knee, which was already in a brace from a previous injury. With only one leg to stand on, Foreman lost his greatest assets - speed and movement - against Cotto. "Maybe I should punch the referee in his face," said Leidecker, still fuming in the tunnel underneath Yankee Stadium an hour after the fight. Leidecker, a blond beauty who is a model and former boxer herself, was up screaming from her seat at ringside moments after her husband got up and limped around the ring. He was a sitting duck for the powerful Cotto, a Puerto Rican who has held world titles at 140 and 147 pounds before adding Foreman's 154-pound title to his mantel on Saturday. Her pleas to stop the fight went unheeded until Joe Grier, Foreman's trainer, threw in the towel in the eighth round. But Mercante ignored the towel, saying he didn't think it came from the fighter's corner. After calling time out and asking Foreman if he wanted to go on, Mercante ordered the fight to continue. "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." Mercante was the referee in the bout between George Khalid Jones and Beethavean Scottland aboard the carrier Intrepid in 2001. Scottland collapsed in the ring, lapsed into a coma and died a week later from injuries sustained in that match. Leidecker and Mercante had a verbal confrontation in the dressing room after the fight when Mercante came in to check on Foreman. Murray Wilson, Foreman's manager, had to calm her down before things got out of hand. "I can understand why she was upset," Mercante said. "She's his wife. But he's a champion and I wanted to give him a fair opportunity to defend his title. A few weeks ago, I had just the opposite situation where I stopped a fight and the wife came after me saying that I didn't give her husband a fair chance to defend his title." Leidecker said she didn't care that her husband wanted to continue fighting on one leg. Mercante should have stopped it, she said.