Champion wrestler Anthony Robles fact checks his 'Unstoppable' true story

Spoiler alert! We're discussing moments from the new movie “Unstoppable” (streaming now on Prime Video). Proceed with caution if you haven't seen it yet.

It’s pretty rare for someone to star in their own Hollywood biopic. Nothing stops Anthony Robles, though, not even convention.

The sports drama “Unstoppable” follows the inspirational tale of Robles, who was born with one leg, as he goes from Arizona high school wrestling superstar to undefeated college national champion. Jharrel Jerome plays Anthony, and Robles himself doubled the actor in grapple-heavy match scenes. “I got the opportunity to train for something all over again, to go back in time and just relive that special moment,” says Robles, 36.

Robles’ underdog story involves coaches, teammates, siblings and his loyal mom, Judy (played by Jennifer Lopez), helping a young Anthony navigate self-doubt, a troubled home life and those who underestimate his fortitude.

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It also authentically mines Robles' real life, from aspirational quotes that hung in his high school wrestling room (“A man's character is his fate”) to a humorous scene when Jerome's Anthony, while working at an airport, playfully hops up and down on a plane’s wing. “Truth be told, man, when I'm around the house, I hop around. I don't really use my crutches," says Robles, a producer of the movie alongside Lopez and her ex Ben Affleck.

The motivational speaker, author and wrestling coach at suburban Phoenix’s Hamilton High School discusses what’s fact and what’s fictionalized in “Unstoppable”:

Anthony Robles really did scale the famous ‘Rocky’ steps for inspiration

Robles’ high school and college national championship wins both were in Philadelphia, and at the beginning and near the end of the movie, Anthony scales the famed “Rocky” steps at the Museum of Art for quiet moments to get his mind right.

That’s taken directly from Robles’ personal experience, because he has done the steps many times over the years – as seen in a family photo taken during the 2011 national championship tournament that appears during the film credits. And like in the movie, Robles had a “Rocky” poster in his bedroom. The Sylvester Stallone classic “was a huge inspiration for me,” Robles says.

Anthony was ‘Unstoppable’ during his ‘Hell Week’ initiation at Arizona State

When his abusive prison guard stepfather, Rick (Bobby Cannavale), leaves the family, Anthony turns down a full ride at Drexel University to stay at home and help his mother. He walks on to the Arizona State wrestling squad, where coach Shawn Charles (Don Cheadle) puts his athletes through the wringer during tryouts, including a 3-mile extreme hike up a rocky mountain. On his crutches, a determined, bloodied Anthony conquers the hill and wins his team’s respect.

The key scene was influenced by a similarly treacherous hike Robles endured during his ASU team's "Hell Week." He remembers “definitely” feeling a sense of accomplishment “but beat up, that's for sure.” That final initiation was “one of the hardest things I have ever done mentally and physically. But it showed me a lot of what I was made of. It reminded me of a life lesson: You just take it one day at a time, one step at a time. Just focus on what's in front of you.”

'Unstoppable' captures Anthony Robles’ confrontational relationship with his stepfather

“Unstoppable” closely follows Anthony’s goal of a national championship, but the most tense scenes come out of his relationship with his stepfather. Rick gets in Anthony’s face, and the son bristles when the stepdad's abuse of Judy turns physical. When Anthony finds Rick threatening his mother, he puts Rick in a headlock until the cops come to arrest him.

Though the physicality was dramatized, a similar confrontation did occur between Robles and his stepfather. “Things were broken, police were called, that happened,” Robles says. “Watching it on film every time, I feel the anger boiling back up in me. But being able to see it and knowing we got through it, that means the world to us.”

A batch of fan mail from kids changed Anthony Robles' life

After losing the 2010 championship to his Iowa rival, Anthony goes on a winning streak his senior year. One day, his high school coach (Michael Peña) drops off a box of fan letters to Judy from students writing to “a living hero.” She shares the notes that show Anthony how much of a role model he has become, and they have a touching moment.

In real life, he received a stack of letters from a third grade classroom in Atlanta the summer after his junior year after “a difficult loss” in the national quarterfinals. “It broke me. I didn't think I was going to come back my senior year,” Robles says. But that fan mail (which he keeps in a trophy case at home) “completely just changed the trajectory of my life.” Winning that title “didn't matter to me. Really, what mattered to me now is I wanted to show these kids that anything's possible.”

Judy Robles, Anthony's mom, really has no patience for hecklers

Robles says Lopez did “a very accurate job” of portraying his mother’s fiercely protective nature, and there are two crowd scenes at wrestling matches when the movie Judy goes total mama bear. The first is when a couple of teenage girls make fun of him for having only one leg; the second is when a woman shouts “Break his leg!” Judy is ready to fight both times.

“When I first started wrestling, I remember going out there and someone was laughing in the crowd, and my mom actually said something to them. She got in their face,” Robles says. During quiet moments when Robles was squaring off with an opponent on the mat, “my mom would make it a point to yell. That was on purpose, so that I could lock onto her voice during that critical moment. When everything else was quiet, my mom was still in my head.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Is 'Unstoppable' a true story? Anthony Robles fact checks the movie