I always level'd my warriors as Fury and I found escaping to be rather easy.
Piercing Howl is a god-send and will work on any melee.
Yeah, you have intimidating shout on a 2 minute cooldown, but don't forget Shield Wall every 30 minutes. How often are you going to need to "escape".
As far as damage control, you can stance dance and disarm, you can also hamstring, run out and then intercept back in for a stun. And once you hit 64 or so, using battle stance to weapon-swap a shield and spell-reflect is sometimes just obscene (ogres in Nagrand + spellreflect = Profit, at any level). Demoralizing shout and thunderclap help tremendously with mitigation as well.
By the way, epic items in the auction house aren't necessarily the best "twink" items anymore. Quite often you'll find since post 2.3 there are just some wicked weapons available at lower levels. You WILL need help, but it will be worth it.
Example:
[Crescent of Forlorn Spirits] ilevel 35 weapon, available at level 22. (Note! This weapon can use Outlands enchants! Yes, a Level 22 weapon with Savagery, Crusader or Battlemaster).
[Sword of Serenity] ilevel 44 weapon, available at level 34.
[Gryphon Rider's Stormhammer] ilevel 53 weapon, available at level 42.
[Lifeforce Dirk] ilevel 54 weapon, available at level 43.
[Thrash Blade] ilevel 53 weapon, available at level 45.
[Tidecrest Blade] ilevel 57 weapon, available at level 49.
[Blade of Reckoning] ilevel 60 weapon, available at level 50.
[Skilled Fighting Blade] ilevel 60 weapon, available at 50. (And with expertise!)
Another question is... why would you ever want to grind mobs 3 levels above? It's far more faster to grind 3 levels below. This is the first time I've heard of someone advocating/wanting to grind higher level mobs.