Koby Abberton reveals what really went down on SAS Australia

Bra Boy Koby Abberton has dubbed the handling of the pandemic in Australia “disgusting”, as he revealed what went down behind the scenes on SAS.

It seemed as though Koby Abberton could have made it to the end of SAS Australia, but the Bra Boy officially bowed out on Wednesday night.

The 42-year-old cited excruciating back problems for his surprising decision to leave the course, as he gave news.com.au a wide-ranging interview about returning to the public eye, his childhood and why he won’t be returning to Australia.

“I’m not gonna be the guy to say I could’ve won the show. I gave up,” he says from his home in Bali.

“I’ve had two back surgeries. When I was told to jump on my neck, I knew it wouldn’t go well. I threw my back and my hips out and from that point on I was f***ed.”

Some 16 years after shooting to notoriety when he was found guilty of perverting the course of justice in his brother Jai’s murder case (for which Jai was acquitted after a trial), and the subsequent release of a feature-length doco Bra Boys: Blood is Thicker than Water, Abberton has yet again become a divisive character with the airing of the Channel 7 series.

One second he was stepping up to stop the confronting female boxing bouts and getting choked up when talking about his wife and son, the next he’s sabotaging his opponents and doing half the required push-ups.

But Abberton says there’s a lot of tricky editing, and plenty of footage you don’t see.

“It makes us look like we’ve had fighting and in-house dramas whereas in real life these things were like 10 second discussions,” he says. “I genuinely liked everyone on the show and I’d be friends with them all.

“I was doing a lot more than what they showed, in terms of talking to the girls a lot more than what you saw and helping people out. I was there with Heath (Shaw) when he was getting a little more agitated than you’d realise, and I was always talking to him and being very supportive.

“They didn’t show the parts where I was really trying to help people out.”

Koby Abberton bowed out of SAS Australia due to back problems.

He also says there’s “simple things” that are manipulated for TV, citing an example of him scaling a mountain shouting “yeehaa!”, in a move that was criticised by the soldiers.

“How that actually happened, they made it look like I went last, but I was first and was excited for myself for pulling it off easily,” he says.

“It’s simple things like that they change around, it makes for great TV and I’m here for it but it’s not exactly what you think.”

While he’s fairly lighthearted about the criticism he cops, Abberton admits he’s had “anxiety” for the last three months ahead of the show airing.

“I want to be clear though, my anxiety is more nervous. It’s not lying in my bed scared. But if I was to tell you the truth, to be back in the public eye has been a crazy experience,” he says.

“As soon as people see it, I’m getting hundreds of messages on social media and to deal with that is really quite hard.

“Seeing yourself (on TV) everyday … The character I am, and the person I am, it’s hard to see.

“But I get a good laugh out of me. I’m not going in there to be an army man. It’s a TV show. I had the best fun I can have in that experience. In the end I enjoyed it.”

It’s no secret Abberton had a rough childhood. He was candid on the show about his abusive upbringing in Maroubra in Sydney’s east.

He tells us he was humiliated at school for the clothes he wore. “They’d say, ‘Don’t dress like Koby’”, adding “What they didn’t understand was, I was lucky to even have lunch that day.”

Despite the early trauma, Abberton was determined to shift that cycle of suffering after the birth of his son, Sunny Makua, six years ago with his wife Olya.

Koby Abberton, his fiance Olya and their son Sunny Makua live in Bali.

“I plan to be a great dad to my six-year-old son now, and I plan to be a great dad to my 50-year-old son,” he says.

“It all just comes down to me working on it. I consciously try to go out with them, to eat every meal at the table, to go out with my wife, to go on trips as a family.

“My wife is from the Ukraine and has the most beautiful family. I learnt from their love. If it wasn’t for them, it would be a different story.

“I really don’t want to sit here and talk about what a good dad I am, but how did my childhood design me? It designed me not to be like any father I knew. I know how that made me feel growing up and I don’t ever want to put my son through that.”

Abberton left his Maroubra locale almost 10 years ago in search of a better life in Bali.

Currently, he says Australia is not the place he knows and loves.

“For starters, you’re paying $2 million for a brick wall facing another brick wall,” he says.

“I’m living in a beautiful house over the ocean for an eighth of the price. Australia’s just become too expensive. The corruption and greed, it’s everywhere.

“I miss Australia and Maroubra like a long lost son. I miss it more than anything.”

Koby doesn’t see himself moving back to Australia.

But that doesn’t mean he’ll be back any time soon. Not one to mince his words, Abberton dubs the country’s leaders “disgusting” for their handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“How can you have 30,000 people watching an (NRL) semi final (in Queensland), then two hours away in Tweed Heads people aren’t able to work or see their family?” Abberton asks.

“The state of Australia right now … I’ve never seen it in such a disgusting way. We’ve got cowards and dobbers telling on each other for not wearing masks.

“We’ve got frontline nurses who have worked on this thing the whole way through and they’ve had their jobs taken because they don’t want to get vaccinated. We’re losing our country.”

Admittedly, Abberton says he’s “not a scientist”, but he stands firmly for personal choice.

“I’m not complaining about the virus, I’m just seeing the way it’s been handled. We’ve made this war between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.

“Australians are my people. I love them. I don’t care about your personal decision. I don’t give a sh*t if you’ve got two heads. I’m with you all. But we have go to move forward together.”

SAS Australia airs Monday to Wednesday on Channel 7