Early SmackDown Rating #’s, Punk’s Title Reign, Cole/JBL

Partial Source: Pwinsider.com

— On behalf of everyone here on the website, I want to take this time to wish you all a very Happy New Year! Hopefully you got to spend some time with your families over the holiday season. You guys have been awesome this past year with your continued support of the website and we can’t thank you enough for that. We owe all of our success to you. As I noted on Christmas day, this has been an amazing year for us. In the 15+ years that we’ve been online, we’ve NEVER had a better year than 2012. Again, we owe all of our success to you guys as you’ve been amazing with your emails, comments and all around support. Whether you “love” us or “hate” us, you continue to check back in. Most of you check the website multiple times on a daily basis for updated news and it really shows in our web traffic. We’re at all-time highs these days. We look forward to an even better year in 2013 and know you guys will be there to continue supporting us. We’ve got some big things planned for 2013 including new site features. We hope 2013 will be just as good as 2012 was and it’s all because of you. As corny as this sounds, there would be no us without you. Thank you so much again. You guys seriously kick ass! HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!

— Michael Cole will be joining JBL on his “Layfield Report” audio show on a weekly basis.

— The WWE”s ECW Unreleased Volume 1 and Best of Falls Count Anywhere DVD will air on pay-per-view this month.

— Friday’s edition of WWE SmackDown scored an average audience of 2,660,000 viewers. This is back in the show’s normal range.

— Leon Peters sent this one in: With it now being January 1st, this means 2012 was an entire calendar year (Jan. 1 – Dec. 31) where the WWE Championship did not change hands one time. The last time this happened was in 1987 when Hulk Hogan went the entire year as WWF Champion. Also, 2012 was a leap year. The last time there was a leap year without one WWF Title change was 1980 when Bob Backlund went the entire year as Champion.

100% DIRECT LINK (PHOTOS): The Original WWF Title Belt Found! (**RARE**)! WHOA!!