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They wanted to make Axew, and by extension Iris, look a lot stronger than they reasonably should have been. BW pretty much always overhyped Iris as this special gifted trainer whenever she got focus, but her skills didn't really match up with that hype in my opinion. Her skills as a trainer were mediocre at best, but they put her on a pedestal with winning nearly a hundred battles in a row before even becoming a trainer and being set up as a new Gym Leader.How in the hell did Iris's Axew tank all those hits from Cynthia's Garchomp?
Also Axew should've evolved here
https://twitter.com/mana_chan__/status/1472389441259978756?t=5PpxpHAw3tt8b7TU9cyeMQ&s=19
Axew evolving during that battle could have made it becoming a Haxorus when Iris returned in Journeys more believable, but I also think it would have been a tough sell to make Axew evolve at any point in BW. It didn't battle that often, Iris didn't actively train it and it kept learning overpowered moves to give the illusion that it was stronger than it was. To be fair, it only used Outrage once and they kept using Giga Impact instead, but it still felt like they were trying too hard to make Axew look strong with overpowered moves as opposed to making its development slow and steady throughout BW. They really didn't know if they wanted Axew to be the cute useless baby Pokemon or the strong secondary mascot, so they decided to do both. If they really wanted to make Axew evolve at least once in BW, its strength really should have been more consistent and its development should have been handled better.