John Cena proposes to Nikki Bella at WrestleMania 33. (WWE.com)
Tonight on SmackDown Live, it’s the first show following WrestleMania 33. One of the biggest developments of the night on Sunday was John Cena proposing to Nikki Bella, so will the two of them be on SmackDown Live tonight to discuss the engagement? Or will they take some time off?
According to WrestleZone, John Cena and Nikki Bella are not expected to be on SmackDown this evening, with neither of them currently being advertised for the show.
On the WWE.com official preview of tonight’s SmackDown, Cena and Bella’s presence is framed as an open question, with the preview saying, “What is next for the two love birds? Will they take some take to celebrate their engagement, or will they return to SmackDown LIVE tonight?”
The world is anxious to hear Cena and Bella discuss the engagement, so if the two of them were going to be on SmackDown tonight, the WWE would probably advertise this and really try to draw in additional viewers.
What seems more likely is that we’ll get a Miz TV segment in which The Miz and Maryse mock Cena and Bella for the proposal, and maybe the WWE will show a few never-before-seen backstage clips of Cena and Bella after the engagement, but Cena and Bella themselves will not physically be in the arena in Orlando, Florida.
Cena and Bella were already expected to take a hiatus from the WWE soon; the only question was if they would start it immediately or if they’d make one final stop on SmackDown first. Nikki Bella is taking time off to heal her neck. She had surgery on it last year, but it seems she’s been encountering some new problems lately.
“I have a slight herniation above where I had surgery,” Bella said in an interview with Between the Ropes. “I just got cleared by my surgeon Wednesday, so I’m good to go….I kind of sprained my neck, and we found out some other stuff is going on, so I’m definitely going to have to take some time to heal that.”
Meanwhile, Cena is leaving to go work on movies. He has a film coming out next April called The Pact, which is about three fathers trying to prevent their teenage daughters from having sex on prom night. He’s expected to be gone for much of 2017.