I know Rito never explicitly said it was the exact same animation, but considering the entire community was going crazy over how the Reaver Karambit had the 'champions' animation you'd assume they're the same.

Which they are, for the most part. HOWEVER the key difference is that the Reaver animation does not loop and ends really quickly in around 2s whereas the champions animation goes on for ages. The length of the animation itself isn't a huge issue but the way it ends abruptly after spinning makes it look really weird, like they took the champions animation and just deleted all the keyframes after that point without bothering to animate a proper ending transition. This may seem insignificant but for some people (like me) it makes a huge difference. I just find it much nicer to press 1 button and let it play while waiting for rounds to start/end or while rotating and having to press it every 2s defeats the purpose.

I just thought I'd put this out there for the people who haven't bought it yet in case it influences your decision since I don't really see people talking about it.