We kick off this week's Living Room Lariat with a full WWE RAW breakdown. CM Punk and Finn Balor are set to collide at Elimination Chamber, and while the Chicago connection makes sense on paper, we dig into why the match setup could have been booked better and why the stakes feel a little off heading into WrestleMania season. We also look at why LA Knight winning the Elimination Chamber would be a genuinely great move for WWE's WrestleMania landscape, why Je'Von Evans getting his Chamber spot is exactly the right call, Penta entering the Intercontinental title picture, and how Bron Breakker's injury might be the moment Bronson Reed has been waiting for. Plus thoughts on the AJ Styles promo and the Stephanie Vaquer and Liv Morgan feud finding its footing.

Then we shift to NXT, where the creative struggles are becoming hard to ignore. Outside of Joe Hendry and Ricky Saints, the men's division lacks main event ready talent, the handling of Josh Briggs feels like a missed opportunity, and a potentially compelling women's story with Zaria and Sol Ruca had its intrigue stripped away before it could breathe. NXT has talent. It just isn't doing enough with it right now.

From there, we get into one of the bigger ongoing WWE debates — does it make sense to unify the World Heavyweight Championship and the WWE Championship? With Netflix and network television giving WWE two massive platforms, we make the case for why one unified title could actually elevate the secondary championships rather than diminish the overall product.

We then head to New Japan Pro Wrestling and the Hiromu Takahashi farewell at New Beginning. The sendoff was beautifully done, but Hiromu leaving tells a bigger story about where NJPW has failed its own talent. We break down why moving Hiromu and El Desperado into the Heavyweight division after the departures of Will Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada could have helped NJPW avoid the valley they are currently trying to climb out of, and why that missed opportunity matters for the company's future.

We close with a brand new recurring segment — War Games Survivor Series. The concept is simple: what would Survivor Series have looked like if WWE had War Games from the very beginning? This week we cover 1987 through 1998 and build out what those War Games matches would have been, who would have been in them, and how the stories of those eras translate to the War Games format.

In This Episode:

• Intro (0:00)
• RAW Recap (0:20)
• NXT Booking Struggles (10:25)
• Should WWE unify its belts? (15:51)
• NJPW loses Hiromu Takahashi (21:23)
• WWE Survivor Series/War Games Re-Write (27:13)
• Outro (41:28)