Awaken the Sleeper

Threaten set the template: pay a little red mana, borrow a creature for a turn, untap it, hand it haste, swing, then hand it back. Every variant since has bolted a rider onto that skeleton to justify its slot, and this one's rider is aimed squarely at gear. The Equipment clause turns a temporary steal into a permanent tax on the opponent's investment: you take the creature for the turn as usual, and you may also strip every sword, boot, and blade off it, so the body reverts naked. That shifts what the card is hunting for. A plain borrow-and-swing effect wants the biggest attacker to redirect; this one wants an opponent who has sunk real mana into suiting up a single carrier, because it punishes the concentration rather than just the creature. And the destruction and the steal work in concert: since Equipment falls off and stays under its owner's control when the creature leaves, you destroy the gear first, then feed the disarmed body to a sacrifice outlet, and the opponent gets neither back. The optional wording is not a hedge against your own sacrifice line; it exists so that when you point this at your own equipped creature (reclaiming it from a control-magic effect, say), you are not forced to blow up your own swords. It reads the board for dressed-up targets before raw power, and against a deck built around one loaded threat it does two jobs in one sorcery.