Daniel Jacobs praised "tremendous champion" Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez as the former IBF holder walked away with his head held high on Saturday.

Jacobs surrendered his IBF belt in Las Vegas, where WBA and WBC champion Canelo unified the middleweight titles with a unanimous decision.

Fined for missing weight at a contractually agreed-upon weight check on the day of the fight, Jacobs fell to a 35-3 record in a tough 12-round fight at T-Mobile Arena.

But American Jacobs – who was diagnosed with bone cancer in May 2011 and returned the following year – was proud of his performance.

"He's a tremendous champion," Jacobs told DAZN after the fight. "I take my hat off to him, I got to go back and review the tapes, but I gave it my all out there, we'll see Daniel Jacobs bigger and better next time."

Jacobs now has just the three losses in his career and two of them have come to possibly the two best fighters in the world in Canelo and Gennady Golovkin.

And some argued Jacobs should have come away with a win on the scorecards against Golovkin.

On the unification bout against Canelo, Jacobs said: "I definitely think it took a couple of rounds to get my wits about me.

"To figure out his rhythm because he's a pop-shotter and it's really hard to train for a guy, especially when they put the 10-ounce gloves on, to really get a feel for his speed.

"But he's a fast guy, really slippery, it was a great contest today, I look forward to the future, what the future has in store, but I feel like I gave enough tonight to get the victory, but I'll go back to look at the tapes to see what happened."