User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail Episode 255: Tartaros arc: Steel, Review/@comment-27087644-20151017153116/@comment-1776824-20151017154518

In the back of volume 49(?), Hiro mentioned that Laxus had a much larger role in the manga originally, but he had to be cut due to time constraints (a very polite way of saying his editor didn't like it and made him remove it =P).