You can picture maul as a long-handled hammer coming down with its whole weight behind it. Nothing sharp, nothing careful — just heavy force landing on something and forcing it apart. Most of the other meanings can be seen as that same blow landing somewhere new: on a body, on a new book, on a losing team, on a bowl of peaches at the market.
From the word’s history
Wiktionary traces maul to Middle English malle, from Anglo-Norman and Old French mail, from Latin malleus 'hammer', and calls it a doublet of malleus. The tool is the older meaning, and the verb uses read as that hammer blow applied to living things and to reputations.
依照 Wiktionary 的記載，maul 來自中古英文 malle，再往前是盎格魯諾曼語與古法文的 mail，源頭是拉丁文 malleus（鐵槌）；它和英文的 malleus 是同源的雙生字。也就是說，工具是比較老的意思，動詞的各種用法，可以想成那一記槌擊被搬到活的身體和名聲上。
Wiktionary, "maul"
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