Super Structure : Azteca Stadium, With a Field Surrounded by a Moat and Barbed Wire, Is One of the Largest in the World

It’s a colossus, a concrete monstrosity rising up from a parking lot like something left behind by the Mayas or Aztecs.

Inspecting Azteca Stadium up close for the first time is like the first visit to Hoover Dam--the human eye can’t take it all in. Your neck gets a workout as your head swivels.

Inside, from the top row, it looks as if--provided you could remove the half-closed roof and then find a crane big enough--you could lower the Rose Bowl and fit all of it inside Azteca.

And tonight in this stadium, prize fighting’s paid-crowd record could tumble when promoters Don King and Dan Goossen ring the bell on their four-fight championship card, featuring Mexican star Julio Cesar Chavez against Greg Haugen.

Promoters on Thursday said that more than 100,000 tickets had been sold. In fact, a small riot broke out at stadium ticket booths when ticket sellers announced they had run out of tickets, but would “soon” have more from the printer.

At the time, several thousand people were in line for tickets on one side of the stadium, several thousand on the other. Fights broke out and some people tried to storm the gates.

In an instant, police with automatic weapons appeared and an Army helicopter flew overhead.

Chavez emerged from a nearby office and, speaking on the PA system, asked for calm, assuring that more tickets were on the way.

Azteca has 89,000 permanent seats and 25,000 seats in three stories of private suites and boxes. In addition, there will be 16,000 field-level seats for the fights.

That comes to 130,000, which would easily top the 120,000 who watched Jack Dempsey vs. Gene Tunney in a driving rain at Philadelphia on Sept. 23, 1926, at what later became John F. Kennedy Stadium.

Pro boxing in America has long since left outdoor stadiums for the smaller--yet richer--venues at Las Vegas and Atlantic City hotels, where site fees of up to $12 million have been paid.

Tonight’s show, for the most part, is for the common man. The tens of thousands trooping into Azteca tonight will be primarily interested in Chavez, possibly Mexico’s greatest champion ever.

Promoters say 40,000 seats tonight are priced at $15 or less. A half-mile closer to ringside, the prices are more Las Vegas-like. Two thousand ringside seats are $865 each.

Azteca, built for soccer matches at Mexico City’s 1968 Olympics, opened in 1966. It is basically a two-tiered structure, split all the way around with three stories of suites and boxes, many of which are owned by prominent Mexican families and corporations.

To discourage soccer hooligans, the field is surrounded by an eight-foot-wide, four-foot-deep moat. On the field side of the moat, there is a seven-foot-high chain-link fence. Inside the moat, strands of barbed wire are angled toward the seats.

In the improbable event that Chavez loses tonight, such barriers could be useful.

In 1986 here, for the World Cup final between Argentina and West Germany, attendance was 114,000. The 1968 gold-medal soccer final drew 111,000.

On Wednesday afternoon, after the ticket uprising, Chavez began to work out in a parking lot ring. Several thousand spectators swarmed around the ring, cheering his every punch.

And despite hot, smoggy weather, the Azteca parking lot was a carnival scene. Vendors, under beach umbrellas, sold shaved ice, candy, chewing gum, Chavez T-shirts and Mexican flags.

The asphalt was littered with blowing paper, and several stray dogs joined in the tumult.

Inside the giant stadium, however, from the top row, the Chavez workout and the carnival-like goings-on were so far below, it was all but a silent scene.

On the stadium turf, some workers constructed the boxing ring while others put down black mesh netting to protect the turf. The 16,000 folding chairs were stacked in towers, waiting to be set up on the field.

This is a relatively new facility among the world’s giants, but it looks much older than its 27 years. In the high seats, trash remains uncollected from the previous event and the concrete seats are grimy.

Unlike the saucer-shape of the Rose Bowl, Azteca seems to rise up sharply, with very little of it below ground level. From the top row, it seems as if you could clear 20 rows with a standing long jump.

Encyclopedias say the world’s largest stadium is Strahov Stadium in Prague, built in 1934. There, for gymnastics exhibitions, 240,000 can be accommodated.

And it is believed that Maracana Municipal Stadium in Rio de Janeiro is the second biggest. It has a seating capacity of 155,000, but has standing room for nearly 45,000 more.

A paid Maracana crowd of 199,854 saw the Brazil-Uruguay World Cup final in 1950.

The Rose Bowl is considered North America’s largest stadium, with a seating capacity that has varied between 102,000 and 106,000 in recent years. Michigan Stadium at Ann Arbor, Mich., seats 101,701.

“Stadium” is derived from the Greek word stade, the distance covered in ancient footraces, about 200 yards.

The first ancient Greek stadiums were hairpin-shaped, for chariot races and footraces. Later, the Romans improved on Greek design with circus and amphitheater construction.

The impetus for stadiums of modern design was the 1896 Athens Olympics, where the main stadium was a reconstruction project on the site of an ancient one.

Then came the rise of American college football and professional baseball, which triggered a stadium boom that continues today. The first stadium to seat more than the ancient Roman Colosseum’s 45,000 was the Yale Bowl, completed in 1914 with capacity of 70,000.