John Cena and Nikki Bella have called off their nuptials just weeks before their wedding date.
“While this decision was a difficult one, we continue to have a great deal of love and respect for one another,” the couple, who had been together for six years, said in a statement tweeted out by Bella. “We ask that you respect our privacy during this time in our lives.”
The professional wrestlers got engaged in April 2017 on live TV during a couple’s match. Their destination wedding was scheduled for May 5. (In October, they announced that they’d changed the date due their schedules.)
While promoting his movie Blockers, Cena, 40, told PEOPLE about how he already felt married to the 34-year-old Total Bellas reality star.
‘People come up to me and say, ‘I love watching your wife on television.’ And I love that, so that happens to me 10 times before it would be a, ‘Yo man I love your work.’ It’s always, ‘I love watching your wife on television,’” he said, adding that he wished the two had tied the knot “yesterday.”
“I’m already ready to go there and it sounds nice hearing it,” he said of fans calling Bella his wife. “I know that we will have a wonderful future together because I love the way that sounds.”