John Cena quietly married his girlfriend Shay Shariatzadeh back in October and his ex-fiancee Nikki Bella was asked about the marriage during an appearance on the All Things Vanderpump podcast this week. Cena and Nikki were famously in a long relationship that culminated in him proposing to her at WrestleMania 33, only for the pair to break off the engagement one month before the scheduled wedding in 2018.
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Bella admitted at the time she hadn’t congratulated Cena, saying, “Are there rules? Am I supposed to? Should I send flowers?”
Lisa Vanderpump, the show host, then encouraged her to do so on the spot and she agreed.
“John, congratulations on your wedding,” Bella said. “I’m very, very happy for you.”
The Total Bellas star and former WWE Divas Champion has discussed why the pair broke up numerous times, explaining that she wanted to be a mother and Cena wasn’t interested in having kids.
“For the purpose of his privacy, I don’t want to retread old events here — particularly the ones that got plenty of screen time and rehashing in the media. There is not much more to milk from that well-documented chain of events,” Bella wrote in her memoir, Incomparable, earlier this year. “But I do think there is value in explaining what I learned about myself during a time of extreme highs and lows, in the hopes that it helps some of you.”
“Rather than turn and face that, I pushed it under the carpet and figured I could pretend like it wasn’t there. Because I was terrified of losing my love, I stuffed my desire for marriage and kids as deep as I could,” she wrote. “He had made it clear that they weren’t on the menu for him. That’s tough, though, because if you’re inclined that way, then the more you grow to love someone, the more you want it all. I stopped giving voice to those needs, though. I was worried my ex would call it off and let me go. And while I wanted those things very badly — I just wanted him more.”
Bella told Us Weekly last month that Cena reached out after the news broke that she had welcomed her first child with fiance Artem Chigvintsev.
“So with the baby, he reached out to Brie and I both,” Bella said. “We haven’t had an individual conversation in gosh, I don’t know how long, but it was very short and sweet!”
