The brutal welterweight battle of attrition between Tim Bradley and Ruslan Provodnikov is the best fight of 2013, so far, according to fans who took part in a recent RingTV.com poll. The Omar Figueroa-Nihito Arakawa lightweight war and Mike Alvarado-Brandon Rios rematch were runners up.

However, the clear choice among fans for the fight of the year to date is the Bradley-Provodnikov fight, which garnered 44.4 percent of more than 11,000 votes. Bradley survived a 12th-round knockdown to win a razor-thin decision in March.

Figueroa-Arakawa received 19.4 percent of the votes, while Alvarado-Rios II took in 16.4 percent. Figueroa dropped Arakawa twice to win a unanimous decision last month. In March, Alvarado upset the odds by outpointing Rios, who stopped him in a fight of the year candidate last year.

Carl Froch-Mikkell Kessler II, Marcos Maidana-Josesito Lopez, Erislandy Lara-Alfredo Angulo, and Guillermo Jones-Denis Lebedev each received 8.3 percent or less of the votes.

This banner year for action fights appears far from done. A fan dream matchup between 140-pound champ Danny Garcia and Lucas Matthysse has been made for Sept. 14. In October, Bradley is scheduled to fight Juan Manuel Marquez and Alvarado will square off with Provodnikov. In November, Rios takes on Manny Pacquiao, and word is that Maidana might get a shot at Adrien Broner that month.

Photo / Naoki Fukuda