(Dec 1, 2012; New York City; Austin Trout celebrates his unanimous decision win over Miguel Cotto at Madison Square Garden. Credit: Ed Mulholland-USA TODAY Sports)

Been nearly three months round these parts since we updated the pound-for-pound top 20 list of the best boxers in the world regardless of weight, which is informational about how the sport has been going: It means not much has happened to warrant significant changes. But as four men who were on the list to start 2013 have fought since, including one last weekend, now's as good a time as any. It's also just an excuse to catch up with the latest comings and goings of boxing's elite practitioners, a number of whom will be occupied between now and the next regularly scheduled update about every two months or so.

Here's the most recent past update, for comparison's sake. You'll notice our #20, featherweight Orlando Salido, is out after his loss to Mikey Garcia. But gee, I wonder who will replace him? Life is such a mystery.

As usual, the dominant criterion is quality wins, especially of recent vintage. Other criteria, such as the "eyeball test," factor in around the periphery.

Well that’s just cruel -- kind of like coming off the Timothy Bradley/Ruslan Provodnikov high into a week without much on. Mind you, if old Ruslan taught us anything, it’s that we shouldn’t underestimate the potential of fights before they happen. That’s easier said than done and rather invalidates the whole point of the schedule, though.

So I, for one, will continue to make predictions based on the available evidence. I will be wrong sometimes. For that, I apologise to boxing’s all-knowing super-scribes, who always know the exact outcome of every fight before it happens but only sometimes deign to write it down.

This week’s boxing TV schedule isn’t packed, as previously mentioned. There’s the super middleweight rematch between Arthur Abraham and Robert Stieglitz in Germany as well as some other bits and bobs. May as well get to it.

(Timothy Bradley, left, shares a moment with Ruslan Provodnikov, right, after the fight; photo credit: Chris Farina, Top Rank)

With all the business maneuvering in the boxing news the past couple days, and despite heaping helpings of social media love, Timothy Bradley-Ruslan Provodnikov still might not have gotten the attention it deserves. Fights rarely come more stupefying, with a big underdog nearly upsetting the favorite, one man throwing caution to the window against another man who doesn't know the meaning of "restraint," dangerous and thrilling exchanges, and a race to the finish. It's as though Top Rank and HBO hired a dramaturge to coach both men beforehand. Just when you think you've seen it all in boxing, the sport does something to remind you that you never, ever have.

Revisiting the fight doesn't preclude a look at its business side, though, or else that headline would be a big lie. It's an almost entirely Bradley-Provodnikov-focused edition of Weekend Afterthoughts.

"Can't figure out/What happened to us/I won't count on you anymore/I'll be all right/Don't worry about me

Aren't you happy now/You got what you want/I wanted you/But I'm over that now/I'm so sick of you and what we went through"

--The Wrens, "Happy"

How far we've come, and not for the better. A few years ago, if someone told you HBO had broken up with Golden Boy Promotions and adviser Al Haymon, not only would you not have believed it, but you would've probably thought it was a good thing. Yet as of Monday, HBO has broken up with GBP and the virtually parallel Haymon, and mostly it's just the latest mutation of the biggest black mark on the sport right now: the ongoing split in the sport between the two biggest and best promoters -- GBP and Top Rank -- and the two biggest networks, Showtime and HBO.

It's not as if there won't be some advantages for HBO in going forward without GBP. It's not as if the move was all that surprising, given how things have been going between HBO/Top Rank and Showtime/GBP. But it's hard to figure out how this is good for boxing overall, or its fans.

As time has accumulated, the Irish around the globe have accepted that St. Patrick's Day has morphed into a kind of "every man's drinking holiday." And far be it from them to complain about a drop or two, but at its Celtic heart, it's an Irish holiday, the celebration thereof apparently important enough to maintain for over 1,000 years. 

When Irish warrior traditions gave way to pugilistic fancy, the transition was an easy one -- especially in a boxing world where, at the start, just about anything was more or less acceptable in the ring. The list of all-time great Irish fighters seems unusually long for an island that, in the eyes of the world, isn't particularly large. More difficult to compile is a list of all-Irish bouts that had a bit more on the line than a post-fight pint. 

The following four battles involved nothing but Óglaigh na hÉireann -- the warriors of Ireland.

(Timothy Bradley socks Ruslan Provodnikov; photo credit: Chris Farina, Top Rank)

Timothy Bradley could've fought intelligently against Ruslan Provodnikov Saturday night on HBO and secured a victory with relative ease, but perhaps driven by the fan animosity toward him over the bunk Manny Pacquiao win, he fought like a much stupider, much more awesome version of himself. It nearly got him knocked out. Instead, he won a narrow unanimous decision. It also should have won over anyone who had any hostility toward Bradley.

You will not see a fighter throw his brain out the car window so cavalierly in your whole life, and that's not meant as a diss on Provodnikov, who brought to the ring exactly what he was expected to and ought to have -- outrageous tenacity and hard punching. But Bradley could've beaten that guy easily just by fighting in the crafty way he did for a handful of rounds over the fight, and instead ignored the advice of his corner for most of the 12 rounds to avoid catching the kind of punches that had him fighting half-unconscious for spells. It led to an early contender for Fight of the Year.

All's well that ends for British boxer Curtis Woodhouse and his Twitter troll, upon meeting face to face. Nice apology, nice acceptance, good insight from Curtis about how he shouldn't have to block anyone -- that the onus is on the troll to stop with the abuse. It's remarkable, really, how much time people spend on Twitter venting their spleens in totally unacceptable ways at or about people they don't like. Strange that a medium so centered around fleeting thoughts has a way of deepening and prolonging negativity.

Floyd Mayweather was trolling Andre Ward this week, because he's emotionally mature and not at all insecure; Carl Froch was playing dress-up in the latest boxing/video game crossover; and a variety of boxers were making preparations for their next fights, like the men in the headline and Gabe Rosado and Chad Dawson.

(Grimsby’s Kevin Hooper as photographed by Jon Corken for The Grimsby Telegraph)

Some fighters rattle on about hard work and dedication as if they hold a monopoly on them. Floyd Mayweather uses it as his gym mantra in fact but there aren’t many that can match Grimsby lightweight Kevin Hooper. He goes for the English junior lightweight title in Cleethorpes this weekend, against Dewsbury’s sweetheart Gary Sykes -- and he took time out from his manic schedule to talk to TQBR.

“I’ve got two jobs,” Hooper explained. “I work as a security guard (at an inner-city retail centre) and a doorman as well. I’m up early in the morning training and then it’s work, training after work, night runs…I mean, I put it in.”

It’s just three days since 2013’s “boxing season” began in earnest, and the networks are of the impression that we haven’t realised that there’s not much on this week. Oh, we have. We’re just desperate after the long winter of boxing. Winter is a metaphor, because even though it actually was winter, it also wasn’t such a bountiful time for fans of the sweet science, geddit?

• Timothy Bradley vs. Ruslan Provodnikov, Saturday, HBO, Carson Calif. A full preview will be along later in the week, but I don’t have that much to say about Bradley vs. Provodnikov [Ed.: Actually, this will do just fine -- there's not much to say about this fight overall]. While the two ex-junior welterweights have similar levels of determination, Bradley (29-0, 12 KO) is on a whole different level to Provodnikov (22-1, 15 KO) in terms of skills and athleticism. An easy night’s work. On the undercard, Australian based Nigerian welterweight Wale Omotoso (23-0, 19 KO) faces former Floyd Mayweather, Jr. protégé Jessie Vargas (21-0, 9 KO). Omotoso has done nothing to deserve a slot on HBO, apart from beating up the usual Australian suspects in RSL clubs. Nevertheless, this should be entertaining. Omotoso, who super-manager/talent scout Sampson Lewkowicz once told me is the best prospect in the world, is an interesting combination of African style muscularity and stand up boxing. He’ll make Vargas, a light puncher, work very hard. Can he go one better than Josesito Lopez, who dropped a split decision to the Vegas based boxer? I’m not sure. Omotoso hits pretty hard, but he has defensive holes that may allow Vargas to get off and get out of range. I’m going to go with Omotoso out of patriotism/a nagging feeling that Vargas just isn’t that good. [Ed. After the fight, watch for Road To Rios/Alvarado II, a doc on a rematch of last year's junior welterweight Fight of the Year between Brandon and Mike.]
• The Rest. You know it’s a weak week (homonyms!) when there’s only one card above "The Rest"… Out of the closet featherweight and PR success story Orlando Cruz (19-2-1, 19 KO) fights Aalan Martinez (14-1-1, 10 KO) at Kissimmee, Florida on Telemundo on Friday. Between “Aalan” and “Kissimmee” it’s a big night for strange spelling… Mexican welterweight steamroller (in terms of both speed and style) Pablo Cesar Cano (26-2-1, 20 KO) looks to bounce back from losing to Paulie Malignaggi against Manuel Perez (19-8-1, 4 KO) on Fox Deportes on Saturday. Super middleweight puncher Marco Antonio Periban (19-0, 12 KO) fights the same night. Who would have though Caesar and Mark Anthony would fight on the same card?...Featherweights Robert Marroquin (22-2, 15 KO) and Antonio Escalante (28-5, 19 KO) do battle the same night on UniMas… The Transnational Boxing Rankings Board’s #6 junior flyweight, Filipino John Riel Casimero (17-2, 10 KO) fights Panama’s Luis Alberto Rios (18-1-1, 13 KO) in Panama City the same night.

"Laissez faire, telle devrait être la devise de toute puissance publique, depuis que le monde est civilisé." - René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d'Argenson

Years of leaving sleeping dogs where they lay have marched us into an economic singularity waiting to collapse inward, pulling the rest of us into a gravity from which we cannot escape. Though the financial debacle that appeared to begin in 2008 has been made to decelerate some in the last couple of years, we still reside in the thick of it.

A talking point repeated ad nauseum just about any time jobs reports are released is how the current economic crisis isn't all that unlike the Wall Street Crash of 1929. While not completely inaccurate, the pickle we find ourselves in appears to have the potential to be markedly worse due to the degree of deleveraging necessary to maybe turn matters around.

But the point of comparison between the two is often that we're doomed to repeat mistakes -- or practice new unfortunate economic principles -- that crash us into a ditch.

Not unlike the 2008 financial crisis, which in no small part was caused by deregulation, the sport of boxing has suffered from a borderline broken economic model from its mainstream inception.