Elimination Chamber 2012 Participants & Matches

The Elimination Chamber 2012 participants for the two chamber matches have now been announced.  This past week's episodes of Raw and Smackdown revealed the competitors who will challenge for the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships respectively.

On Raw, it was announced that CM Punk will defend the WWE Championship in the Raw Elimination Chamber against five others.  They are: The Miz, R-Truth, Dolph Ziggler Kofi Kingston and Chris Jericho.  No John Cena or Kane in the match, as they will apparently fight in a "Last Man Standing" match one-on-one to put an end to their "rise above the hate" feud.

Meanwhile, on Friday's Smackdown GM Teddy Long announced the six competitors for the Smackdown Elimination Chamber match.  Daniel Bryan will put the World Heavyweight Championship up for grabs against Big Show, Cody Rhodes, Wade Barrett and Randy Orton.  Originally scheduled for the match was Mark Henry.  However, Henry complained too much to Long in the opening segment, and was taken out of the match, then suspended indefinitely for putting his hands on Long.  Later on it was announced that Great Khali would be his replacement in the match.

From the looks of things, early predictions favor the two champions coming out of their chamber matches still holding their titles.  However, it wouldn't be surprising if Chris Jericho managed to use some sort of trickery and defeat Punk for his title in the chamber, leading to them having a rematch at Mania.  It's going to be interesting to see what goes down on the Smackdown version, although right now it seems to point towards Bryan finding a way to escape as the champ.

The Elimination Chamber PPV arrives on Sunday, February 19th, 2012, starting at 8PM EST on cable or satellite TV as well as live stream video feed through WWE.com.