I'm thinking the same. Sollozzo wouldn't have been able to attack the Corleones if he wasn't an important figure in the Mafia. I'm thinking that he probably was a boss of a town in Sicily.
Salvatore Maranzano, for example, is thought to have been the boss of Castellammare in Sicily which is why he became a boss in New York just a few years after he arrived.
"It was between the brothers Kay -- I had nothing to do with it."
