Alright, I admit defeat temporarily on this.
It appears that the unarmed animation can not be given to ANY weapon due to it needing to be a different animation and there being an itcf_ animation limit hardcoded into warband...
But all hope is not lost! When WSE is used in conjunction with CRPG, hardcoded things are able to be changed!
oooooooohhhh WSE. Those will be the day when pole-arms don't have their hardcoded stun and I can finally melee properly with a rock.
I'll be editing my initial post to update this.
Please refer to the first post now. It has an adequate explanation on everything. Thank you