He can't use his weapon's surges during the melee portion.

Well at the very least there's "Crushing Blow":

Exaust this card while performing the [Melee] attack of "Close and Personal" to choose one of the following:
The attack gains:
[su]: Weaken, Stun
The attack gains:[su]: +2[Dam]

Also they he is allowed the surges in Skirmish:

• When a figure corresponding to a Deployment card performs an attack using an alternate attack pool (such as the melee attack on "Close and Personal" on Biv Bodhrik's Deployment card), they may still trigger their surge abilities, unless the ability triggering the attack states otherwise.

It actually gives him better sustain since he can still use recover (green would probably be too good).

He has class card upgrades that he can purchase that allow him to use the surges from S&P.

Also, you can use the Surges to recover, which is pretty cool, because you can potentially refund the entire strain cost of S&P if you recover on both attacks.