LAS VEGAS _ Canelo Alvarez wanted to move on.
He tried to move on.
He couldn't.
In case it wasn't already obvious, his unanimous decision victory over Daniel Jacobs on Saturday night was confirmation of how Alvarez remains inextricably linked to Gennady Golovkin.
As crafty an opponent as Jacobs proved to be, as tactically fascinating as the fight was, as electric as the atmosphere inside T-Mobile Arena was at times, the middleweight showdown failed to produce the drama of Alvarez's two confrontations with Golovkin.
Alvarez is expected to fight next in September.
His opponent should be Golovkin, whom he defeated in a rematch last September. Their initial encounter was ruled a draw.
The long-standing saying in boxing is that styles makes fights and Alvarez's didn't blend particularly well with Jacobs. The chess match that unfolded over 12 rounds Saturday was no surprise, certainly not to Alvarez, who won on the official scorecards by scores of 115-113 (twice) and 116-112.
"It was how we thought it would be, that it would be a tough fight," Alvarez said in Spanish.
Alvarez and Jacobs started cautiously, with the first 30 seconds of the fight consisting of exclusively feints.
In the first couple of rounds, Jacobs circled clockwise and flicked his jab, looking more to touch Alvarez with his lead hand than to actually inflict damage. On a couple of occasions in the opening round, Jacobs followed up with right hands, which was enough for him to win the round.
When Alvarez started throwing his own jab, it was shorter, but considerably harder than Jacobs'. Alvarez won a close second round, which prompted Jacobs to experiment with fighting out of a southpaw stance. Alvarez continued to land the harder punches.
By the fourth round, the crowd was impatient with Jacobs' style, producing an ugly chorus of homophobic chants in Spanish that were directed at the cancer survivor.
The shorter Alvarez started to close the distance in the fifth round, bobbing and weaving under Jacobs' jabs. Alvarez appeared to be ahead by a wide margin at that point.
Jacobs started to take back the momentum in the sixth round, as he moved back into a southpaw stance. Jacobs won that round, as well as the next, as he found a surprising amount of success moving forward with his dominant right hand as his lead hand.
The best punch of the fight was landed by Jacobs, a left hook in the ninth round that turned around Alvarez's head.
Alvarez looked exhausted as he entered the so-called championship rounds and Jacobs claimed the 10th round.
But Alvarez outfought and outboxed Jacobs over the last two rounds. Alvarez won the final two rounds, as well as the fight, with precise punch placement. He won with superior defense, slipping some punches and blocking others.
In the 6-foot Jacobs, Alvarez faced not only a taller one, but also a considerably heavier one, even though they both made the 160-pound limit Friday.
Jacobs essentially wagered $1 million on himself to win, ignoring penalties for missing weight in a morning weigh-in Saturday to ensure he would enter the ring with an advantage.
Suspicions were that Jacobs also had a significant edge in size in a narrow loss to Golovkin in 2017.
Jacobs skipped a second weigh-in mandated by the IBF for his showdown with Golovkin, which would have required him to weigh 170 or less on the morning of the fight. Jacobs wasn't eligible to win the IBF championship. The tradeoff was that he was able to take extra bulk into the ring, with Golovkin's trainer, Abel Sanchez, speculating he weighed more than 180 pounds at the opening bell.
Thinking Jacobs was open to sacrificing the IBF title because the WBA belt was also at stake, the IBF later dropped the requirement for a second weigh-in for unification fights.
Whatever the IBF's stance, Alvarez's promoters insisted there be a morning-of-fight weigh-in for a Jacobs fight, as they didn't want Alvarez to be at a major weight disadvantage.
Only the financial penalties for weighing more than 170 pounds on Saturday morning failed to deter Jacobs from adding nearly 14 pounds overnight. The advantage cost him $1 million. Alvarez weighed in at 169.
There were indications Jacobs had no intention of weighing less than 170 pounds on the morning of the fight, as promoter Eddie Hearn joked earlier in the week that he would consider paying the fine himself.
It didn't matter. Alvarez won.
There will be no rematch with Jacobs. There should be another with Golovkin.
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