I started doing this instead but it says Avatar resizing failed. Im trying to grab a image from a URL.

$icon_sizes = array(
            'topbar' => array('w' => 16, 'h' => 16, 'square' => TRUE, 'upscale' => TRUE),
            'tiny' => array('w' => 25, 'h' => 25, 'square' => TRUE, 'upscale' => TRUE),
            'small' => array('w' => 40, 'h' => 40, 'square' => TRUE, 'upscale' => TRUE),
            'medium' => array('w' => 100, 'h' => 100, 'square' => TRUE, 'upscale' => TRUE),
            'large' => array('w' => 200, 'h' => 200, 'square' => FALSE, 'upscale' => FALSE),
            'master' => array('w' => 550, 'h' => 550, 'square' => FALSE, 'upscale' => FALSE),
        );        
        // get the images and save their file handlers into an array
        // so we can do clean up if one fails.
        $files = array();
        foreach ($icon_sizes as $name => $size_info) {
            echo $resized = get_resized_image_from_uploaded_file($photoreference, $size_info['w'], $size_info['h'], $size_info['square'], $size_info['upscale']);
        
            if ($resized) {
                $file = new ElggFile();
                $file->owner_guid = $new_user->guid;
                $file->setFilename("profile/{$new_user->guid}{$name}.jpg");
                $file->open('write');
                $file->write($resized);
                $file->close();
                $files[] = $file;
            } else {
                // cleanup on fail
                foreach ($files as $file) {
                    $file->delete();
                }
        
                register_error(elgg_echo('avatar:resize:fail'));
                //forward(REFERER);
            }
        }
        
        $new_user->icontime = time();

The original unresize profile image is also already saved ("<image-filename>master"). I think the view mod/profile/views/default/profile/owner_block.php deals with displaying the profile image on the profile page:

$icon = elgg_view_entity_icon($user, 'large', array(
    'use_hover' => false,
    'use_link' => false,
));

If you would change "large" to "master" the unresized image should show up. But this will very likely result in layout issues because the column the profile image is displayed in does have a fixed size. And displaying the profile image in original size regarless how large it is will surely be a serious issue. Even if you limit the width of the column to a certain max width you will still have to modify the profile page layout to deal with the possible very large profile image.