No one said he had to be ME, but doing basically nothing but jobbing to Neville all the time does nothing for either of them.
They just don't know how to utilize what they have. It isn't just the cruiser-weights.
The Neville feud was actually booked in a way to do something for both of them. It's one of the few times WWE's generic, stale to the point where you don't even notice it anymore storytelling actually was - in theory, and forgetting that last sentence - effective. (I wonder how well this would have come across in NJPW...)
Neville's been so good in this run as CW champ that he's been able to not just get himself over but make himself look like a credible, hard to beat champion... enter Aries. At WM the story was that the usual offense Neville has been using to beat the Tony Neses of the world wouldn't quite put away Aries, who kept coming back and Neville had to resort to attacking an injured eye and resorting to the crowd-pleasing superfinish he hates using to pull out the W. Neville looked strong, but Aries was on par. Next month, Neville and Aries are battling again, back and forth battle as Neville's frustration that he just can't beat Aries gets the best of them, then when trapped in Aries' submission without a way out he attacks the ref for the DQ... Neville's still good enough to beat anyone they put in front of him on any given night, but this one, Aries was even better...
(then LOL they had a clean finish the next show where Neville was strictly the better man, then the feud ended. Lets ignore that.)
Honestly, that's when a big push for Aries might have been a great starting point. If you establish him as being on-par with the best Cruiserweight - with Neville still the champ - why not try your hand at the heavyweight division much like he did in TNA? If the co-best Cruiserweight can use that division as a launching point to becoming a star in the regular division, that does a LOT to help the 205 Live crew, doesn't it??
But that's when the rest of the booking issues come into play. With Balor and Rollins both being pushed and protected very well, Aries could struggle to stand out with those two... and ESPECIALLY with those two having to resort to feuds against a dead character in Wyatt and the fucking Drifter to fill time while waiting for a slot against Lesnar to open up. Who would Austin Aries feud with, Apollo Crews?... That sounds fun on paper but when it's 9:30 on Monday and they roll that match out there...
But anyway, since it's 2017 lets talk about what people actually want to read about: Cody Rhodes... I wonder how the wrestling landscape is going to change as more guys like he, Dorito, and Aries keep doing what they're doing, and people like Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks shun their offer to keep doing what they're doing. Cody isn't doing anything to light the world on fire outside of WWE. Outside of that Okada match (which he deserves a lot of credit for), he hasn't had any noteworthy appearances or great matches or... But he's come across as so much bigger of a star. If you keep talking about the guy being dream match material, people will start to believe it. All the wrestling fans nowadays follow the indies to some extent, so. WWE is increasingly becoming just another company...
With NXT and their own writing really pushing their talent as being mere spokes in the wheel, it feels really vindicating to watch guys like Aries leave and yell about how he ain't some spoke. He's the GMTEL.