LAS VEGAS (AP)Tim Dahberg — Daniel Jacobs was bigger. Canelo Alvarez was better — but not by much.

Alvarez added another title belt to his collection Saturday night by winning rounds early and outboxing Jacobs in their middleweight showdown to take a close but unanimous 12-round decision.

Two ringside judges scored it 115-113, while the third had it 116-112. The Associated Press scored it 115-113 in favor of Alvarez.

“It was just what we thought,” Alvarez said. “We knew it would be a difficult fight. We just did our job.”

Jacobs, who lost $1 million out of his purse by not making the contracted weight the morning of the fight, was clearly bigger than Alvarez and landed perhaps the biggest punch of the fight in the ninth round when he connected with a left hook.

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But Alvarez was fast and quick and kept Jacobs off balance with his movement as he won a narrow decision in the same arena where he fought to a draw and a close win over Gennady Golovkin.

“He’s a pot shotter,” Jacobs said. “I felt I did enough to get the victory.”

The judges didn’t, though, largely because Alvarez was more active early and was the more aggressive of the two fighters. Alvarez built a lead early, winning the first five rounds on one scorecard and four of the five on the other two.

But Jacobs seemed to find himself midway through the fight and roared back to make it competitive on the scorecards. He won the 12th round on two of the three scorecards.

Alvarez, a 5-1 favorite at fight time, was tested but did enough to win in a fight that had no knockdowns and no serious fouls. Neither fighter ever appeared badly hurt, though Jacobs landed some of the bigger punches in the late rounds.

That included the left hook in the ninth that seemed to shake Alvarez, if only for a moment.

“It was a hard shot but I went to the corner and they asked me and I said it was no big deal,” Alvarez said. “I continued with the fight. What do you want?”

Alvarez, the red-headed Mexican sensation, earned $35 million for risking his titles against Jacobs, a Brooklyn fighter who held a piece of the middleweight crown himself. He got another $1 million from the purse of Jacobs after Jacobs weighed in too heavy the day of the fight.

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