The story below is another chapter
in my crime novel-in-progress.
You can read the earlier
chapters via the links at the bottom of the page:
The story originally appeared
in American Crime Magazine.
Upton “Uppercut” Clarke
By Paul Davis
In his day, Upton Clarke,
known as “Uppercut,” was a promising heavyweight boxer.
He was big, strong and fast. Clarke
was a huge and ferocious black fighter who was brutal to his opponents. He had
a powerful upcut, which often knocked his opponents out cold. He won most of
his fights and he was popular with the fight fans.
But Clarke had a lot of bad
habits. He drank, did drugs, got into public bar fights, fought with cops, and
got arrested.
As I sat at Salvatore
Stillitano’s grandmother’s kitchen table, we discussed his late father’s
involvement with the infamous fighter. Stillitano, the son of Nicodemo “Nick
the Broker” Stillitano, had become a federal cooperating witness against other
organized crime bosses in the 1980s. After helping to put the crime bosses, who
had planned to murder him, in prison, he went into the Witness Protection Program.
When Salvatore Stillitano returned
to South Philadelphia, he contacted me, hoping that I would write his life
story. He told me in our first meeting that as I was half-Italian and grew up in
the predominantly Italian American South Philly, I would understand him better
than most journalists.
That I was a newspaper crime
reporter and columnist who covered organized crime for many years was a clear plus
in his eyes. He said he read my columns and magazine pieces, and he was
especially fond of an earlier piece of mine in which I wrote about meeting his
late father in Palermo, Sicily back in 1975 when I was a young sailor in the
U.S. Navy.
I described Nick Stillitano in
the piece some years later as an elderly slim and polite gentleman with dark hair mixed with gray, and large, dark protruding eyes that could, I believe, intimidate people
if he had chosen to use them as such. He was intelligent and spoke well. He
looked more like a prosperous businessman than a notorious gangster.
Having previously visited Salvatore
Stillitano’s grandmother’s house and interviewed him about his father’s 1960’s
rise in the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family, Stillitano in
this interview session wanted to talk about the early 1970s when as a teenager, he
was allowed to shadow his father as he went about doing his various criminal
activities. I laid my tape recorder, notebook and pen on the kitchen table.
Back in the late 1960s, Nick Stillitano
was a well-known boxing promoter, gambler, and the Caporegime, or
captain, of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family’s Wildwood, New
Jersey crew. Salvatore “Salvy Shotgun” Stillitano was then a teenager who idolizes
his father. The son was allowed to accompany his father as he was promoting the
sensational boxing match between Clarke and a younger popular heavyweight named
Marlon Wilson, known as “The Kid.”
Clarke was a North Carolina
farm boy. The big youngster ran afoul of local law enforcement and his parents
sent him to live with his aunt and uncle in North Philadelphia. The city’s
black teenagers ridiculed him, calling him a big, dumb black farmer. He endured
the taunts stoically, but when one of the teenage hoodlums in the schoolyard pushed him, Clarke beat him and two of his friends brutally.
The three boys, members of a
notorious black drug gang, debated whether to kill Clarke, or to recruit him
into the gang. The teenagers put aside their hurt feelings and hurt bodies and
invited Clarke to join the gang. As Clarke had no friends in Philadelphia, he
agreed.
His uncle, not liking the way
his wayward nephew was heading had Clarke join a local gym and under the
tutelage of a former heavyweight southpaw boxer by the name of Arthur “Lefty”
Moore. Moore saw real talent in the young man, and he convinced his friend and
employer, Gus Frangella to manage him.
Clarke did not trust
Frangella, nor did he trust any white man, but he trusted Lefty, so he signed
on with Frangella as his manger and Lefty as his trainer.
Nick Stillitano often worked
out of Rocco’s Passyunk Avenue Gym in South Philadelphia. Stillitano’s partner was a New York
mobster named Joseph “Joey Pug” Puglisi, a former professional middleweight
fighter. The two promoters ruled the fight game in the late 1960 and early 1970s.
Stillitano and Puglisi promoted
the fights of Upton “Uppercut” Clarke, then a heavyweight contender. Stillitano
was able to get Clarke a fight with another up and comer, Marlon Wilson. Wilson,
known as “The Kid,” was a glib, good-looking young black fighter. Wilson was
lighter and shorter than Clarke, but he was skilled and flashy.
The upcoming
fight was getting a lot of press and fight fans were looking forward to the
bout. Newspaper sport writers called the bout “The Beauty and the Beast.” Fight
fans and gamblers were betting heavily on the fight.
But a few weeks before the
fight, Clarke got drunk in a North Philadelphia bar and knocked out the bartender when he refused to
serve the intoxicated boxer. Two of the bar’s bouncers came to the bartender’s rescue
and Clarke knocked them out as well. The crowded bar’s customers moved away from
the fight and huddled together into corners, fearful of the huge, crazy drunken
fighter.
Someone called the police.
Sergeant James Monroe received the call as he happened to be talking to an old
friend, Detective Bill Bartlett. Bartlett, then-Mayor Frank Rizzo’s bodyguard, stood
at 6’3 and weighed over 200 pounds.
Bartlett was quiet and
dignified, but he was a powerhouse when he had to be.
Many people in Philadelphia
and beyond considered the former police commissioner and populist mayor to be a
racist. But others pointed out that the so-called racist mayor was guarded by
two black cops.
“Rizzo don’t hate black people,”
Bartlett often told people who asked him how he could work for Rizzo. “He hates
criminals, be they black, white or whatever.”
Although Bartlett was off
duty when Monroe received the call, he accompanied his old sergeant and friend
to the bar.
When Monroe and Bartlett entered
the bar they saw the unconscious bodies on the floor, people huddled in
corners, and Clarke in the center of the bar threatening two patrol officers.
Bartlett stepped in front of the patrol officers and made a show of pulling out
his “sap,” a five-inch leather pouch that covered a lead pipe.
Clarke looked at Bartlett and
then looked at his sap. He suddenly sobered up and decided that he didn’t want
to fight the big cop. Clarke turned and placed his hands behind his back,
allowing one of the patrol officers to place handcuffs on him. Without further
resistance, Clarke was taken to the local police station.
One of the arresting officers
called a reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News and told him about Clarke’s
arrest. The other news outlets in Philadelphia and across the country picked up
the story.
A week later, Nick Stillitano
called Clarke to a bar after closing time. With Stillitano were his teenage son, Puglisi, and Stillitano's two constant companions. Anthony Gina was a
small man and former welterweight known as “Tony Ball-Peen,” as he hit like a
ball-peen hammer. He was known to use the real thing on people after he retired
from the ring.
Stillitano's other constant companion was Dominick
“Dom D” Demarko. Demarko was a big, fat former heavyweight who retired after he
found out that eating was preferable to fighting in the ring. Both former
boxers worked for Stillitano. Also at the meeting were Clarke’s trainer and manager.
The men at the table watched Clarke stumble into the closed bar and restaurant.
They could see clearly that Clarke had been drinking.
Stillitano, who was seating
at a large round table with the other men, pointed to an empty chair and told
Clarke to sit.
“Uppercut, I’ll come right to
the point,’ Stillitano said. “It has been decided. You’re going to go down in
the fourth round with The Kid.”
“Shit, fuck,” Clarke
responded, slow and angry. “I can beat that punk boy. I’m the heavy favorite.
Put your money on me, man.”
“Uppercut, you’re trouble.
It’s all over,” Stillitano said. “You had a good run. We’ll put money down for
you. You’ll come out well.”
“Fuck no, I ain’t gonna do
it.”
Gina stood up and leaned over
table, “Listen you big, dumb…”
Stillitano made a motion for
Gina to sit down.
Clarke looked at Moore and
Frangella. “Ain’t you two got nothing to say?”
Both men sat there still and did
not respond.
“Uppercut, Tony and Dom here
were my fighters, and I took care of them,” Stillitano said in a calm voice. “Ask
them. I’ll take care of you as well. Do you want to own this bar and restaurant?
It’s yours.
“We can set you up here, have
all of your boxing photos on the wall. You can greet the customers and play the
tough guy and big shot. You can have a good life. But you’re done as a fighter.
You drink. You’re loud. You act crazy. You make newspaper headlines. We can’t
have that anymore. So, this is your payday."
"C'mom," Clarke pleaded. "Gives me another chance. I can whip that young boy's ass."
"Uppercut, keep in mind that I have partners.
I have bosses," Stillitano responded. "It has been decided. You will lose to The Kid.”
Clarke hung his head and
nodded meekly.
The Kid won the fight, as
planned, and the mobsters in South Philly and New York cleaned up. Clarke took
his last big payday and Stillitano opened the bar and restaurant in the former fighter's name.
Upton Clarke went on to live
a life of alcohol abuse and later became addicted to heroin. Moore found Clarke dead in his apartment. His death was ruled to be a drug overdose.
But many people in the fight game
and the press believed that someone had given Clarke a “hot shot” of heroin
and murdered him.
© 2025 By Paul Davis
Note: You can read the earlier chapters via the links below:
Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Rigano Murders'
Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'From South Philly To Sicily'
Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Salvie Shotgun'
Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Nick The Broker'