first of all, hammer is better, because it has 2x hex range, 2x hex range has big advantage when fighting against other melee/unarmed builds, because 1hex range is in perk "in your face" zone and gives you 50% miss.
Secondly, unarmed build is even better than melee, because you can just drop enemies weapon/cripple arm when fighting against melee and he is done, and talking about damage it is not really so different. Even with lowest damage unarmed builds you have haymaker attack + bonus hth damage perk, and this makes your basic damage with lowest unaimed attack 8-17 (also haymaker has 15% crit chance, and crippling your enemies is very important if you want defeat someone being unarmed/melee).