Cena was again attacked by Kane, who revealed in the next a number of weeks

An additional match heading into the Royal Rumble from Raw featured John Cena towards Kane. Upon returning to the WWE on the December 12 edition of Uncooked, after an absence of nearly 4 months, Kane interrupted Cena's match in opposition to Mark Henry, and though it was ironically Henry who place him out of motion, he bypassed him and attacked Cena, chokeslamming him before revealing his new mask. Even though demanding an explanation for these functions the following week on Raw, Cena was again attacked by Kane, who revealed in the next a number of weeks of his wish to have Cena "embrace the hate" (his current on-display screen character and t-shirt selling in any other case) in induced by the anti-Cena crowd who ongoing to boo him. When Cena dismissed any intentions of carrying out so, Kane not only ongoing his attacks on Cena, but commenced to immediate his consideration to his close pal Zack Ryder, assaulting him as properly, to the level of injuring him (kayfabe), in the end leading to Ryder dropping his United States Championship to Jack Swagger on the January 16, 2012 episode of Raw, below orders from John Laurinaitis. The same night, Laurinaitis put Cena in a one particular-on-one match against Kane at the Royal Rumble, in addition to reserving Cena in a match towards Swagger. Prior to the match even officially commenced, Cena started to assault Swagger aggressively to avenge Ryder's reduction, prompting Kane to seem on the TitanTron and congratulate him to have began "embracing his hate". On the January 23 episode of Uncooked, throughout a Falls Count Anyplace match (in which Lauranaitis experienced prevented Cena from interfering, on the pretext of never ever granting Ryder a rematch for the United States Championship if he did so), Kane chokeslammed Ryder through the entrance stage, incapacitating him. As Ryder was stretchered and taken away in an ambulance, Eve Torres (Ryder's storyline girlfriend) blamed Cena for Ryder's accidents, top to Cena knocking the microphone out of interviewer Josh Mathews' hand in stress, and donning a quite aggressive look in response to this entire situation

The main occasion from SmackDown involved Daniel Bryan defending his Planet Heavyweight Championship in a Triple Menace Steel Cage match towards Massive Present and Mark Henry. In December 2011, at TLC: Tables, Ladders and Chairs, right after Massive Display defeated Henry in a Chairs match to gain the Entire world Heavyweight Championship for the very first time, Bryan quickly cashed in his Cash in the Bank deal to defeat Massive Demonstrate, immediately after a article-match attack on the latter by Henry. Employing his rematch clause, Huge Demonstrate confronted off in opposition to Bryan on SmackDown, only for the winner to agitate Henry at ringside, who pushed Bryan, therefore retaining his title. The subsequent week on SmackDown, Bryan defended his title in opposition to Big Display once more, this time in a No Disqualification, No Count-Out match, which finished in a no contest, when Huge Present unintentionally ran into and injured Bryan's storyline girlfriend, AJ. The subsequent week on SmackDown, Henry finally enacted his rematch clause from Bryan in a lumberjack match nonetheless, that match also finished up as a no contest, when the lumberjacks became also hostile since of how Bryan experienced agitated them, and the article-match situation erupted into a substantial brawl involving almost everybody. This compelled SmackDown's Standard Manager Theodore Prolonged to officially e-book Bryan, Big Demonstrate and Henry in a Triple Threat Metal Cage match for the Entire world Heavyweight Championship at the Royal Rumbl