By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Daniel Jacobs was surprised when he heard one of the judges scored their fight for Sergiy Derevyanchenko.

Jacobs knows he lost some rounds, but the new IBF middleweight champion is confident he clearly defeated Derevyanchenko in their 12-round, 160 title fight Saturday night in The Theater at Madison Square Garden. Two judges, Tom Schreck and Steve Weisfeld, scored their consistently competitive fight 115-112 for Jacobs, who lost 114-113 on the scorecard of judge Julie Lederman.

“I didn’t think it was gonna be that close,” Jacobs said during a post-fight press conference. “I knew I lost probably a couple middle rounds. But the fact that one judge had me losing, I don’t agree with that at all. But the fact that I got this victory, I’m not gonna complain. All I could do is go back to the drawing board and see what I could do differently.”

Jacobs (35-2, 29 KOs) dropped Derevyanchenko with a right hand late in the first round. Derevyanchenko (12-1, 10 KOs) quickly recovered from that flash knockdown, battered Jacobs’ body throughout their fantastic fight and proved why he was considered an elite middleweight even before he participated in unquestionably his most difficult fight versus Jacobs.

According to unofficial CompuBox statistics, Jacobs landed 181-of-578 overall punches, just 21 more than Derevyanchenko (160-of-658). CompuBox credited them for landing the exact same amount of power punches (137) and Jacobs for landing more jabs (44-of-272 to 23-of-176).

After expressing his views on the scorecards from the Derevyanchenko bout, the 31-year-old Jacobs admitted he’s not always sure what judges seek in scoring rounds.

“But, what I would say is that I hope that judges,” Jacobs said, “or, some way, somehow, boxers can understand what goes through the minds of the judges, or they can tell us prior to the fights the type of style that they’re judging. So it’s not like we’re just completely oblivious to what we need to do in there. Because you wanna cater to your style, but you also wanna cater to the judges, just in case we go to a decision and you get these bogus outcomes.”

Jacobs narrowly lost a unanimous decision to former middleweight champ Gennady Golovkin in their 12-rounder 19 months ago at Madison Square Garden.

Jacobs rebounded from a fourth-round knockdown that night and gave Golovkin what, to that point, was the most difficult fight in the former middleweight champion’s career. Judges Max DeLuca (114-113), Don Trella (115-112) and Weisfeld (115-112) all scored that fight for Golovkin (38-1-1, 34 KOs).

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