By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Canelo Alvarez absorbed a lot of useful information from watching Gennady Golovkin’s last fight against Daniel Jacobs.

The Mexican superstar noticed that the powerful puncher from Kazakhstan didn’t adjust well when faced with a smart opponent capable of boxing and moving out of harm’s way. Alvarez also thinks Jacobs was too wary of Golovkin’s vaunted power early in their fight, which he feels cost the former WBA middleweight champion on the scorecards.

Alvarez still scored that fight for Jacobs (32-2, 29 KOs), who survived a fourth-round knockdown and lost a close unanimous decision to Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) on March 18 at Madison Square Garden.

Alvarez gave his brutally honest assessment of Golovkin’s performance in his first 12-round fight before a press conference Tuesday night in Manhattan. Their event in The Theater at Madison Square Garden marked the second stop on a four-day, three-city press tour to promote their middleweight championship fight scheduled for September 16 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (HBO Pay-Per-View).

“I saw nothing really new from Golovkin,” Alvarez told a small group of reporters through a translator. “He’s pretty much one-dimensional. He’s a fighter that’s very aggressive, that comes forward.

“But I did see that when you have a fighter that is a little bit intelligent, and moves and boxes, he’s gonna give Golovkin trouble. And I think that Jacobs gave him too much respect the first few rounds. And if he would’ve started sooner, and not respected him as much, he would’ve won a clear decision. Even though that happened, I still thought that Jacobs won by one or two points.”

The 35-year-old Golovkin struggled at times against Jacobs, who often was effective when he switched to a southpaw stance. All three judges – Max DeLuca (114-113), Don Trella (115-112) and Steve Weisfeld (115-112) – scored the fight for Golovkin, who retained his IBF, IBO, WBA and WBC middleweight titles.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.