House of Fury boasts of top-flight bout

Whatever name you care to put on it, tonight’s 154-pound championship fight at the Coeur d’Alene Casino’s House of Fury in Worley, Idaho, promises to be one of the best bouts in the casino’s professional boxing history.

Promoter Moe Smith bills it as a WBC Continental Americas Junior Middleweight championship bout. The World Boxing Council prefers to call it the Super Welterweight crown.

Titleholder Vince Phillips (46-8-1, 33 knockouts), from Las Vegas, faces Seattle’s Alex Bunema (24-4-2, 12 knockouts), the fifth-ranked middleweight in the world.

“This is the biggest title fight we’ve had here,” Smith said. “We’ve had a few other title fights through the WBO or some other organization. But when you have a WBC regional belt, you know there’s going to be a title fight in your future.”

For the record, junior middleweight (147 to 154 pounds) is a classification currently only used for professional women’s boxers. That same weight range is considered super welterweight for men. At 154 pounds, where Phillips and Bunema both tipped the scale during Wednesday’s official weigh-in for the fight, boxers can be both a middleweight and a super welterweight.

Bunema scored a unanimous decision over Alberto Mercedes in November to claim the WBC Continental Americas Light Middleweight crown.

Phillips’ last fight was Nov. 4 against Spokane’s Dewey Welliver at Worley, scoring a victory after receiving an unintentional butt to the head at the end of the eighth round.

In the card’s other featured bout, Las Vegas cruiserweight Arthur Williams (39-12-1, 28 knockouts) takes on Tim Shocks (25-17-4, 15 knockouts) of Kent, Wash.

The eight-round bout will be Williams’ first since scoring an eight-round TKO over Spokane’s Luke Munsen in the main event at Worley in August. Shocks scored a seventh-round TKO of Munsen at Ocean Shores in February.

Welliver’s brother, Chauncy (22-3-3, nine knockouts), has his first fight on United States soil since July when he faces Great Falls, Mont., heavyweight Ted Reiter (1-1, one knockout) in a six-round bout. Welliver spent the past five months in New Zealand, where he won five bouts and dropped 30 pounds – weighing in for tonight’s fight at a svelte 246 pounds.

“This is the lightest I’ve been for any fight I’ve ever had,” said the 21-year-old. “When I started out I was at almost 300 pounds. … My goal is to get down under 200 pounds and fight as a cruiserweight. There just aren’t enough heavyweights out there. All the competition is at the cruiserweight division.”

In a women’s bout, Tacoma middleweight Dakota Stone (6-2, two knockouts) faces Yvonne Reis (3-6-1) of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., in a six-rounder.

Undefeated Coeur d’Alene cruiserweight Shawn Hawk (4-0, four knockouts) takes on Greg Benson (0-1) from Moreno Valley, Calif. Hawk, a Dakota Sioux originally from Crow Creek, S.D., won a pair of fights by knockout in February. Hawk recovered from a first-round knock down to score a fourth-round knockout of Leonard Sims on Feb. 4 at Ocean Shores, and scored a third-round TKO of Moses Matovu on Feb. 25 in Boise.