SAN ANTONIO -- El Torito thrilled them again.

Sixteen years after a rape conviction ended his promising young career, Tony Ayala Jr. returned to the ring Friday night to stop an outclassed Manuel Esparaza in the third round of their middleweight fight.

Before a sellout crowd of hometown fans cheering his every move, Ayala showed flashes of the punching power that made him one of the feared fighters of the early 1980s before he was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

He also showed plenty of ring rust against an opponent who lost his last fight on a sixth-round knockout and would have had no business being in the ring with an Ayala in his prime.

Still, this was Ayala's night, one he had been waiting for while occupying a New Jersey prison cell and dreaming what might have been in possible fights against the likes of Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns.

"It felt like the old days," Ayala said. "I can't tell you how much this meant to me."

Ayala, a ferocious fighter who was the No. 1 junior middleweight contender at the age of 19, stepped into the ring for his first fight since Nov. 20, 1982, balding and chunkier around the middle but only six pounds heavier than his former fighting weight.

Instead of El Torito, the little bull, Ayala came into the ring with a ring robe proclaiming him simply El Toro, or the bull.

"Obviously, some years ago I made a terrible mistake," Ayala said. "No fight will be able to replace that."

He immediately took the fight to Esparaza (19-5-1), who offered little defense and seemed content to take punches on the ropes and throw only a few selected punches in return.

Ayala knocked Esparaza to one knee with a left hook to the ribs in the third round, then knocked him down with a flurry of punches in the same corner about a minute later. Referee Rafael Ramos waved the fight to a close at 2:50 of the third round.

"The power felt good," Ayala said. "The timing was off a bit and I'll have to work on it."

Ayala raised his gloves in jubilation as the fight was stopped and tears filled his eyes.

"I was a bit nervous coming in," Ayala said. "It took me a while to get started."

Ayala, who earned $200,000 to raise his pro record to 23-0 with 21 knockouts, weighed 160 pounds for the fight while Esparaza was 161+.

"I'd give him a B-plus," said Tony Ayala Sr., the fighter's father and trainer. "He's not going to box like he used to. He's going to be slipping and sliding more in the ring."

Ayala got an outpouring of affection from hometown fans eager to forget his rape conviction and remember the early 1980s when he was a rising star who seemed destined to be a world champion.

The crowd lustily booed Esparaza, a 21-year-old from Oklahoma City who began boxing as a pro at the age of 14 and whose experience was limited to small town cards.

"I felt intimidated by all those fans," Esparaza said. "I was trying to box but I never got into it."

The crowd of 10,676 in the Freeman Coliseum gave Ayala a thunderous ovation as the final fight on a card featuring mostly hometown fighters.

Before the fight, two middle-aged woman carried a large banner around the ring that read "Hispanic women for better justice support Torito." Other fans waved cards reading "Torito, heeee's back."

It had been nearly 17 years since Ayala last entered a ring to score a third-round knockout of Carlos Herrera. That bout on Nov. 20, 1982, set up a fight that would pay the 19-year-old Ayala $750,000 to challenge Davey Moore for the WBA junior middleweight title.

The fight, though, never happened. In the early morning hours of New Year's Day 1983, Ayala, fueled by a mixture of heroin, cocaine and alcohol, broke into a neighbor's residence and brutally raped her.

He was sentenced to 35 years in New Jersey prisons, and had served 16 of them when he was released in April.

"I can't say I am what I was when I was 19," Ayala said. "But I never want to be the kind of person again that I was when I was 19."

On the undercard, former junior lightweight champion James Leija of San Antonio took a unanimous 10-round decision over Verdell Smith of Tulsa, Okla., and James Coker of San Antonio stopped Lalo Gutierrez at 2:23 of the eighth round of a scheduled 10-round middleweight contest.

Leija's bout with Smith was booed in the late rounds because Smith, 138, fought only in spurts and Leija, 140, had to chase him around the ring. Still, it was enough to give Leija (38-4-2) win in his first fight since losing to Shane Mosley last December for the IBF lightweight title.

Coker, 162+, fighting for the first time since dropping a decision to WBC junior middleweight champion David Reid, was cut on butts in the second and sixth rounds but still had enough to stop Gutierrez, 161+, of Mexico, and improve to 20-1. Gutierrez fell to 29-7-2.