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Felix Trinidad knocks Ricardo Mayorga down three times before the bout is stopped in the eighth round.
Felix "Tito" Trinidad's return to the ring was a knockout success.
Trinidad pummeled Ricardo Mayorga in the eighth round, knocking him down three times before the fight was stopped with 21 seconds to go in the round Saturday night.
In his first fight in more than two years, Trinidad simply overwhelmed the game Mayorga with a barrage of punches, including a left hook that finished the middleweight fight in front of a raucous Madison Square Garden crowd of 17,406.
"I've been in tough wars before, but I dominated this fight," Trinidad said. "He can take a good punch and he took a lot, which was bad for him."
Trinidad, 42-1 with 35 knockouts, lost the middleweight championship three years ago to Bernard Hopkins. After one more fight, he retired, unable to get a rematch with Hopkins.
Instead, Trinidad spent "the good life" in Puerto Rico, he said. But at 31, he is back and he showed against Mayorga that he is in his prime -- and probably worthy of that rematch with Hopkins.
Mayorga never had been knocked down, but he was cut under the left eye in the fifth round, and he had to stop from a low blow to the right thigh in the sixth. Referee Steve Smoger allowed him nearly two minutes to recover with 40 seconds to go in the sixth, but Mayorga never was the same the rest of the way.
Mayorga, of Nicaragua, fell to 26-5-1. He knocked down Trinidad in the third and fought particularly well in the third and fourth rounds.
"I felt good about my performance, but my eye swelled up and I couldn't see some shots," said Mayorga, who was taken to a hospital for observation.
Trinidad was well ahead on all three cards: 68-64, 68-64 and 67-64.
"I knew I could keep the pace up thanks to my discipline," Trinidad said. "I did. That was our game plan, to be cool and calm, and it worked perfectly."
Well, not perfectly. In the third round, Trinidad appeared to slip as Mayorga hit him with a right. Smoger ruled it a knockdown, and Trinidad was up quickly.
In the sixth came the low blow at a time when Trinidad was in command. And in the seventh, Mayorga again turned his back when hit with a left hook that appeared low and on the hip. Smoger, however, told him to continue.
By then, Trinidad was smoking. Although Mayorga started well in the eighth, by mid-round Trinidad was landing all his punches. Mayorga went down for the first time in his career with about 1:15 left in the round. Mayorga was on the canvas again 25 seconds later. And then came the series of blows that ended it.
El Matador was on the canvas for a third time and Smoger was waving his arms, stopping the fight.
"I'm a complete fighter," Trinidad concluded.
The crowd began chanting "Tito, Tito" and waving Puerto Rican flags about two hours before Trinidad entered the ring. When middleweight champion Hopkins came into the building, he was roundly booed.
And when Trinidad emerged from his dressing room, the noise in the Garden was nearly as deafening as when the New York Rangers won the 1994 Stanley Cup.
Dressed in a red robe and red bandanna, both with Trinidad written in bold letters, Tito stood at the edge of the ring and led the fans in cheers before stepping between the ropes.
Mayorga, his hair dyed orange, received a good ovation, but nothing like what greeted Trinidad.
But he made most of the fans happy by making Trinidad's comeback something special.
Source: AP