Why Nikki Bella & John Cena Broke Up After Their WrestleMania Engagement, Explained
The year was 2017 and the scene was WrestleMania 33. John Cena was quite arguably still the biggest active name in professional wrestling, but was slowing down a step. He had taken a some major strides toward part-time status out of a combination of injuries and his budding career in Hollywood. He dominated the third decade of WrestleMania with a series of matches that included main eventing WrestleManias 22, 23, 27, 28, and 29, winning world titles at WrestleManias 21, 25, and 26, and working a WWE Championship match at WrestleMania 24.
Related: 5 Best & 5 Worst WrestleMania Matches Of John CenaWrestleMania 30 saw him work a match with no real stakes against an up-and-coming Bray Wyatt and WrestleMania 31 saw him challenging Rusev for the United States Championship, while WrestleMania 32 saw him out of action for the biggest show of the year. WrestleMania 33 would see him in the unlikely position of working a mixed tag team match that would set him up to propose to Nikki Bella.
John Cena’s Road To WrestleMania 33
While John Cena and The Miz was widely panned as one of the most underwhelming WrestleMania main event programs in 2011, WWE nonetheless revisited the issue in 2017. This time around, the storyline was much better received by most of the audience. Removing world title and main event ramifications from the equation, with The Miz far better established, and with each man’s real life romantic partner in the mix, there was a more appealing combination of factors in play.
In what was arguably the greatest storyline to overlap with and tap into the ethos of WWE’s reality TV efforts, The Miz and Maryse openly poked fun at John Cena, Nikki Bella, and their relationship. The build included a number of amusing vignettes with the heels parodying their opponents. Moreover, Breezango inserting themselves, complete with Tyler Breeze momentarily rebranding as Breezy Bella in drag made for fun diversions in the angle.
According to Sportskeeda and other sources, John Cena was initially disappointed not to have a more conventional big match for WrestleMania 33. In particular, he wanted to face The Undertaker and it's one of a number of instances when fans have posed Cena had a better WrestleMania opponent available. He came around to the match, though, and the moment he wound up sharing with Nikki Bella.
Relationship Struggles Shown On Total Divas And Total Bellas
One of the premises of the feud pitting John Cena and Nikki Bella against The Miz and Maryse was that Cena and Bella’s relationship drama had been on full display for years via Total Divas and, more recently at that point on the spinoff Total Bellas series. There were undercurrents including Cena being stern and protective of his lifestyle, and most pointedly objecting to marriage or having children.
In a case of art and life overlapping, WWE directly fed into this story and Miz and Maryse poked fun at the issues between Cena and Bella. There are always very real questions regarding reality TV and the degree to which conflict posed such shows actually reflects real life. Just the same, it seems there was always a kernel of truth the fundamental rift between what Cena and Bella wanted out of life.
One of the things fans learned from Total Bellas from season three, in particular, was that the couple had ups and downs in their tumultuous final months together. Indeed, the narrative arc of the season saw them finally split up over their irreconcilable differences, only to get back together after Cena agreed to compromise his values for the good of the relationship. The story was ultimately less about reconciliation and building a life together than the couple dissolving, with an underlying issue that Cena didn’t really want to have kids and him doing so less than enthusiastically wasn’t fair to anyone involved.
John Cena And Nikki Bella Moved On To Marry Other Partners
Nikki Bella was first linked on TV to Artem Chigvintsev via Dancing with the Stars, where she was the celebrity and he was the professional dancer she competed alongside. The two rekindled their reality TV partnership when Chigvinsev became a regular on Total Bellas, because he started dating Bella after she had officially split from John Cena. The two wound up married and have a child together.
Related: 10 Pictures Of Nikki Bella Like You Have Never Seen BeforeCena moved on as well. After Bella, he dated Shay Shariatzadeh. In 2020, they were legally married in a small ceremony (in consideration to the status of the pandemic), after which they had a larger, more public ceremony in 2022.
John Cena and Nikki Bella were one of wrestling’s most famous couples, and a bit of a storybook pairing given their respective statuses as arguably the biggest male and female wrestling stars of their generation. The fact that Cena proposed in front of a stadium of tens out of thousands of people (broadcasted into millions of homes) is befitting of the line their whole relationship walked between a deeply personal connection and a very public pairing that played out in front of the masses every step of the way. While it’s unfortunate they weren’t able to see their wedding plans through, it seems both have moved on and are happier for the experience.
