I genuinely hate the new WAR animation.

[Shurrikhan]

The issue is that Passage of Arms has a movement lock that requires the PLD to stay in place or the action is cancelled. This works with the animation because the player is stationary and therefore so is the sword stuck in the ground.
With an attack such as the WAR one from the benchmark, they are almost guaranteed to not have a movement lock and so if the axe was stuck into the ground it would be moving along with the player, since character animations are centered on the character animation skeleton, which would make it look as if the axe in the ground was sliding along with the WAR during the punching part of the animation. The devs are pretty careful to avoid such situations of animations looking goofy during regular use, so I am doubtful they would be okay with it. If they were to go the route of adding something into the animation to show the axe leaving the WAR's hands and then returning, it would likely be something that would look less goofy when the player moves around such as something like the axe is thrown up into the air and then caught after throwing the punches.

You'd think by late 2021 they'd have learned how to spawn a separate, not-player-relative doodad, with the axe just being yanked over as needed via an old Holmgang-like chain. But alas...