Punchvoke (the original Name for Gauntlet and a rather stupid original name at that) was added in Issue 3, which is well before Brutes existed. That’s also when Taunt was turned into an AoE power, which allowed us to drop our dependence on Provoke.
It’s more the other way around, with single-target gauntlet (punchvoke) being added to Brutes (I don’t remember if this in CoV beta, since that period was a Hurricane Katrina issue for me and my CoV beta participation came later as a consequence).