A year after splitting from longtime boyfriend John Cena, Total Bellas star Nikki Bella is opening up to Health on the regrets she has about their very public breakup.
Bella and Cena began dating in 2012, shortly after he filed for divorce from his first wife, Elizabeth Huberdeau. One of the pair’s biggest issues — which was documented at length on Total Bellas — was Bella’s wish to have children versus Cena’s insistence that he did not want to be a father. Despite this disagreement, they got engaged in the wrestling ring in 2017, only to break up just over a year later.
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Though they are no longer together, Bella told Health that she regrets the reality show cameras not documenting more of Cena’s side of their breakup.
“I felt like that wasn’t fair to him because he was on this journey with us from the beginning,” she told the magazine. “What people don’t realize is that John never took one paycheck from Total Bellas. It was beautiful — he was fully there to support me. I’ll never forget his support and his love. That’s what made me sad — I don’t want to say it became the Nikki show, but in a way it did because you didn’t get to see John anymore.”
Refinery29 reached out to Cena for comment.
She added that despite everything, she and her family still “love” Cena and that he’s an “amazing person.”
Though Bella only has kind words for her ex, she has officially moved on. Shortly after splitting from Cena, Bella was spotted out with The Bachelorette’s Peter Kraus. Ultimately, however, she settled down with a different reality competition guy: her Dancing With the Stars partner Artem Chigvintsev. She confirmed she was dating the dancer on an episode of The Bellas Podcast in March. Recently, however, she admitted her breakup with Cena was hard to get over.
"I’ll admit, having a public breakup can scar you," she told reporters at the 2nd Annual Girl Up #GirlHero Awards in October. "It scarred me a lot and that’s why at times, I’ll post [photos with] Artem and then I won’t for a while. It scared me about marriage, it scared me about kids."
Though her split from Cena was complicated, it sounds like there is zero bad blood between Bella and her ex. If there ever were to be, at least these two know they can hash it out in the ring.