AI character doesn't do Anim montage and his skeleton morphs itself in actor BP

Part one of my question has to do with certain attack animation montages, Some of the montages work just fine but others seem to be ignored by the Anim BP. Print string shows triggers that the montage should be playing, but, my character will keep doing the idle animation, I don’t get any warnings at all when this happens. Also when I preview the Anim montage they work perfectly with the skeleton, I even applied the skeleton to the montages but they still won’t play in game. I think the problem is in the Anim BP.

My second question is why my skeleton head and other body parts are squished as seen below.
Screen Shot 2022-10-25 at 4.36.39 PM

He used to have a neck until I changed the preview asset to a single animation to a different mesh that uses the same skeleton. The other meshes chest and head were close together like this but whenever I set the preview asset back the skeleton never readjusted. Now the ENTIRE Anim BP has the skeleton warped like this. WHY???