Even though I believe on your argument on the whole Beartic x Dragonite question, I don’t really think that the thing about levels is possible. Principaly because the levels don’t seem to make a very big influence on the anime. One example is one of the starting episodes of the Unova series where Pikachu loses to Trip’s Snivy. (His name’s Trip right? Right) The Snivy was recently catched and I can’t really believe Pikachu would be something lower than 50 and it surely didn’t just “reset”
I agree with you in principle, but that’s a bad example. The whole context of that battle is that Pikachu’s just had his powers drained by Zekrom. He is operating at vastly diminished capacity compared to practically every other time we ever see him fight, and the games offer us no guidelines on how to simulate that.
Pokémaniacal 