New York, NY (My Sportsbook) - Felix "Tito" Trinidad returned to the ring in dramatic fashion, as he scored an eighth-round TKO of Ricardo Mayorga in a thrilling 12-round middleweight bout at Madison Square Garden.

"Tito," seeing action for the first time in two years and 43 days after retiring, weathered an early storm from Mayorga and dominated the middle and later rounds. After landing several heavy punches, he finally put the incredibly game Nicaraguan on the canvas three times in the eighth round en route to the victory.

"I've been in tough, long wars before," said Trinidad, "but I dominated this fight. We knew that he could take a good punch, and he took a lot of my punches. That was bad for him.

"We wanted to be calm and take our time, and our plan worked out perfectly."

The tide began to turn in this bout in the fifth round, and Trinidad began stalking his pink-haired opponent the rest of the way.

Trinidad pounded Mayorga in the final 45 seconds of the fifth round, and Mayorga's face showed the results of the beating after the round. Mayorga was sliced under the left eye.

Trinidad pounded Mayorga throughout in the sixth, and looked ready to go. But he got a break when Trinidad landed a left hook to the hip with 40 seconds left in the round. He winced in pain, and he received about 1 1/2 minutes of a breather from referee Steve Smolder. It seemed to help Mayorga a bit, as he landed a couple of haymakers in the final few seconds.

In the seventh, Mayorga again attempted to claim he was hit in the hip. But the referee was having none of it in this round, and Trinidad pounced and began to land several head punches on Mayorga.

Mayorga went down for the first time in his career with 1:20 left in the eighth from a left hand to the liver. He got to his feet at the count of nine, and took several more punches before hitting the deck again.

Mayorga again got to his feet, but Trinidad hammered him to the canvas for a third time, and this time Smolder did not count, but waved the bout to a halt. The official time of the stoppage came at the 2:39 mark of the eighth round.

Trinidad landed 39 of 47 power punches in the decisive eighth to end it. He improved to 45-1 with 39 knockouts, while Mayorga fell to 27-5.

This was Trinidad's first bout since he scored a fourth-round TKO of Hassine Cherifi on May 11, 2002 in his native Puerto Rico, a fight that came more than seven months after the only loss of his career -- a 12th-round knockout by Bernard Hopkins for the undisputed middleweight title.

On the undercard, Travis Simms (24-0) scored a decision over Bronco McKart (47-6) on his way to defending his WBA super welterweight title. Simms controlled the fight, winning by scores of 116-112, 118-110 and 117-111.

Also, Zab Judah (32-2) landed 22 of his 33 punches in the first and only round en route to a stoppage against Wayne Martell, who fell to 24-3. Judah floored Martell five times en route to the victory at 2:08.