First post, it's 4 in the morning and I was anticipating the impending patch due to take up a good portion of the day. During that, I kept thinking about Monk and Paladin.
I'm not about to suggest mixing the two, more I was always curious why the hand to hand fighter was the dps while the class using the sword, a bladed weapon, was the one that took punishment.
Admittedly the Paladin has armour and a shield, but the idea still sits wrong and I would've liked to see a more hand to hand tank as it seems a little more realistic that someone who would take parts in brawls would be the one with the granite chin.
It's not totally unreasonable to think that someone that fights with their fists would use armour when steel can give a little extra something to their swing, forgoing all that flourish-y martial arts in favour of thick leathers or metal armour to just flat out eat a hit and hit back harder. A style that prefers to give as good as it gets (and would actually throw something so it has a ranged attack for gods sake). A literal Brawler that wouldn't have the same focused strikes but would have the fortitude to remain standing after a big ol' mob fight.

What I'm about to unload next will likely stir up some comments too but at this point swords are well overdone, and I'd prefer to see some more variations on the different arts of fisticuffs. Hamon himself states that "While these don't deal as much damage as a blade, it hardly matters when you can land several blows for each swing of the sword." and lower damage seems to fit the role of a tank here. It'd add some more (though outdated) blunt related attacks to the game outside of casters just smacking a foe with their book/staff, and might also be able to replicate that annoying aspect of scholar where you can get a off shoot class from an older dps, wouldn't that be lovely?

To be honest though, I miss the fists of earth, some of the older riddle of earths, and monk kinda gets screwed over with a lot of his weapons glamour looking like weird lumps or twisted metal. The main standout weapons being Byakkos fists or the emperor's new fists.
I don't think a Brawler tank is going to fix that particular issue, but I would still enjoy having another means to deck a boss in the face or doing one of those tank blocking sections with just your bare hands. It's only a pipe dream but it's one that I'm going to hold on to and bore my friends to death with.

TL;DR: Fists of earth, but as a whole job.