Wrestler Anthony Robles: Unstoppable’s Real Champion

BORN WITH ONE LEG, HE WON A NATIONAL TITLE. A NEW MOVIE TELLS HIS INCREDIBLE STORY

- JACK SMART

On March 19, 2011, the day he became an NCAA champion wrestler in the 125-lb. weight class, Anthony Robles’s phone “would not stop ringing,” he recalls. Literary agents, reporters and producers alike were scrambling to claim rights to the astonishing life story of the then 22-year-old who wrestled his way from humble beginnings to a national title despite having only one leg. Hollywood knew what Robles, now 36, was just starting to understand: Some stories demand to be shared.

But Robles held off until the right storytellers came along. “I wanted to make sure that it was told in a way that I would be proud of,” he says, and that his supportive mother, Judy, would be “given the respect and admiration” she deserves. Unstoppable, the new movie adaptation of his 2013 memoir (on Prime Video Jan. 16), stars Jharrel Jerome as Robles and Jennifer Lopez as Judy. Director William Goldenberg and producers Ben Affleck and Matt Damon “made it a point to include my family through everything,” Robles says. “It’s one thing for them to be excited about telling our story. But they really just cared about us as people.”