Big difference. Throws are shorter, way way shorter. Beam struggles would be much longer and usually involve a button mashing mini-game to determine a winner.
Ultimately, I think they would want a more natural beam struggle somehow than one that doesn't freeze the players in place that essentially places them in "their own bubble" separate from the other players to do a mini-game of button mashing. A throw doesn't create that separation of gameplay.
How a more natural beam struggle that doesn't induce that feeling of separation for the sake of something flashy and cinematic can even be made is beyond me or even what something like that would be is well outside of my own scope of possible ideas.
