Oh nevermind, I dun durped.
My AI bot was of a blueprint called “AI1Bot_BP”, and it was using the ThirdPersonAnimBlueprint which was trying to cast the pawn owner as ThirdPersonCharacter before really doing any of the animation logic.
As a result, the cast kept failing, and no animation was playing.
So When the “Cast to ThirdPersonCharacter” failed, I just attempted to cast as “AI1Bot_BP” and it succeeded, so the animation plays now 