The badass nicknames of the outlaw bikie world
Names like Peter, Geoff and Chris don’t carry the same weight as Skitzo, Nuts and Ball Bearing. Just like you can’t be a bikie without tatts, you can’t be a player in the bikie world without a badass nickname.
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Nothing completes the bikie persona like a badass nickname.
Names like Peter, Geoff and Chris don’t carry the same weight as Skitzo, Nuts and Ball Bearing.
Just like you can’t be a bikie without tatts, you can’t be taken seriously in the outlaw motorcycle world without foreboding moniker.
Here are some of the bikies with the baddest nicknames who rose through the underworld ranks.
COLOURFUL LIFE OF HELLS ANGEL BALL BEARING
INSIDE MELBOURNE’S OUTLAW BIKIE GANGS
SOMEONE WANTS BIKIE BOSS DEAD — BUT WHO?
BALL BEARING
Real name: Chris Coelho
Club: Hells Angels
A founding member of the Hells Angels in Australia, Ball Bearing was known for the chrome helmet he wore in the early days.
After an internal club split turned violent he retired at the age of 68, handing in his colours not long after being arrested during a raid on one the Melbourne clubhouses in Fairfield.
Midnight Oil drummer Rob Hirst once recalled an arrow with a note attached being shot into an office in Manly in the 1980s, demanding they play at a Hells Angels organised gig at Broadford. It was signed ‘Ball Bearing’. They played the gig.
After retiring and getting married in 2013 he hit the road with wife Dee, travelling through the middle of Australia.
Coelho draped his Harley’s handlebars with Australian flags. Dee rode a smaller Harley alongside him.
Coelho was killed in a car accident near Kew in 2018.
WHACK, SHADOW, SNAKE & CAESAR
Real names: John, Gregory, Colin and Geoffrey Campbell
Club: Bandidos
Of the brothers who joined the original Bandidos in Sydney, one did not survive the infamous Milperra massacre in 1984. Geoff (Snake) was the first to be shot, then Colin (Caesar).
Gregory (aka Shadow) was killed that day, and John (Whack) was shot but died three years later from a heart problem thought to have been linked to the injuries he sustained in the shootout.
Caesar, who was driven to hospital after the massacre with his partner Donna plucking shotgun pellets from his back, would later write a book about the bikie life.
He claimed the feud began after Comanchero boss Jock Ross broke a club rule about not sleeping with another member’s wife.
SNODGRASS
Real name: Anthony Spencer
Club: Bandidos
Once a member of the Comancheros, Snoddy Spencer broke away from the club and formed the Bandidos after obtaining the blessing of the US club to start its first Australian chapter in 1983.
But the two clubs quickly became rivals and the hostility reached a bloody crescendo the following year with a gunfight in the car park of a hotel at Milperra in Sydney’s southwest.
Six bikies and a teenage girl who was simply in the wrong place at that moment were killed.
Spencer took his own life in prison before those left standing after the massacre faced their trials for murder and manslaughter.
In the Australian series Bikie Wars: Brothers In Arms Snoddy was played by Callan Mulvey.
THE CRYBABY COMANCHERO
Real name: Robert Ale
Club: Comancheros (The Last Kings)
Not a club-endorsed title — Ale was dubbed ‘The Crybaby Comanchero’ after his lawyer revealed in court that he’d been having a tough time behind bars and “cried like a baby”.
Ale survived being shot nine times while getting a tattoo at Nitro Ink in Melbourne’s southeast in 2017, only to end up being jailed for 18 years for an arson conspiracy and drug trafficking.
The Last Kings street gang is an offshoot of the Comancheros and as boss of the subgroup Ale plotted to have his minions burn down a nightclub, storm an enemy’s home and spray a rival’s house with bullets.
KAOS
Real name: Michael Kulakowski
Club: Bandidos
Nicknamed “Kaos”, but the opposite was true of his personality, according to former NSW police detective Duncan McNab, who described him as “smart, organised, entrepreneurial and astute.”
Kaos once served in the Australian Army, and quickly rose through the Bandido ranks to become National President.
Specialised in the club’s amphetamine and wildlife smuggling business.
As a boss, he belied his nickname by keeping his outlaw bikers off the front pages.
But his death was in a manner more befitting of his nickname: gunned down in the basement of a Sydney nightclub by a pair of Rebels rivals.
SKITZO
Real name: Peter Hewat
Club: Hells Angels
Peter “Skitzo” Hewat has a notorious reputation as an enforcer.
The Sargeant-at-Arms for the East County Chapter of the Hell’s Angels, Hewat is a major player in the city’s towing industry and recently served jail time for handling stolen car parts worth $250,000.
But his credibility as a tough guy took a hit when he was accused of punching and threatening an elderly woman over his missing dog, when she asked for proof of ownership before returning the pooch.
NUTS
Real name: Geoff Amour
Club: Rebels
A former Rebels bikie president, Nuts lived up to his nickname when he fired seven shots into Des “Tuppence” Moran at an Ascot Vale cafe in June 2009.
Nuts was acting on behalf of crime matriarch Judy Moran, who he affectionately called “Big Mama” — the bitter sister-in-law of Tuppence — over a financial dispute.
Nuts and his partner had been staying at Judy’s home in the lead-up to the hit, for which he was paid in part with a car.
In 2013 he was sentenced alongside Big Mama, with the pair each getting sent down for at least 21 years in jail.
RUTHLESS
Real name: Michael Davey
Club: Rebels
A post on his Instagram read: “I came into this world kick’n n scream’n while covered in some 1 else’s blood no I’m not afraid of leavin the same way” alongside a gun and explosion emojis.”
And Ruthless didn’t take long to live up to his moniker, jailed at age 17 for the bashing death of a teenager in Sydney’s outer west in 2002.
Davey had been in and out of jail since 2009, but was working as a motorcycle mechanic and was a dad to a little boy when he was gunned down in his western Sydney driveway in 2016.
His girlfriend, Sky, told reporters he was lured to his excecution-style death by a phone call from a friend prompting him to go outside.
The Rebels eulogised Ruthless on their Facebook page: “You will be truly missed brother you were one of a kind. May you ride in the Forever Chapter”. He was farewelled at an elaborate funeral in which he was ridden to his grave in a white coffin marked “Rthles”.
PITBULL
Real name: Gokhan Turkyilmaz
Club: Rebels
The MMA fighter was shot eight times in the legs and groin in February after a masked gang stormed his Queensland home. Police have raised concerns about an all-out bikie war in Queensland, with Rebels and Bandidos trading bullets.
THE KNIFE
Real name: Nick Forbes
Club: Mongols (was Finks)
Rose to infamy in the notorious Ballroom Blitz brawl on the Gold Coast between Finks and Hells Angels in 2006. Then a member of the Finks “Terror team”, Forbes clashed with Melbourne CBD gunman Christopher Wayne Hudson (who had just defected from the Finks) in the wild melee that saw guns, knives and furniture brandished when the clubs clashed at a kickboxing tournament.
Originally published as The badass nicknames of the outlaw bikie world
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