The way Hillbilly Jim looks now makes him look more like a badass than he ever looked as the lovable country bumpkin. Hillbilly Jim was the most lovable of the various "hillbilly' stereotypes. As I said, he was a bumpkin but he was a lovable bumpkin that it was okay for families. He still keeps himself in pretty good shape and is hardly recognizable without the big bushy beard and the strange 'fro hairstyle he had. There's a picture of him over on his Wikipedia article. It's a few years old but it's the same way he looked when we saw him on the last Old School Raw. For the most part, however, "hillbilly" characters never rise to major prominence with only very few exceptions. As much as some will hate this, all in all, WWE was far more family oriented then than it is now. Portraying him as some sort of biker or Deliverance style Hillbilly probably wouldn't have worked either. WWE had several "biker" gimmick characters during the 80s and even into the Attitude Era like the One Man Gang, Adrian Adonis had that sort of character when he first came to the company, the Disciples of Apocalypse, etc. None of them really clicked in a major way as biker gimmicks are generally very one dimensional. It was still the 80s, which means racial stereotypes and a massive lack of political correctness were still all the rage. What got him over during his day was his character as a lovable, friendly, big ol' country bumpkin. He was generally given victories over mid-card wrestlers at a certain level but almost always lost to bigger names. After all, who would take the lovable bumpkin Hillbilly Jim seriously when against the likes of Randy Savage or Ric Flair? He was fun for what he was: a bigger, stronger, FAR less technically skilled 80s version of Santino Marella.
If he was in his prime today, I could see him as a member of The Wyatt Family IF they did something with his hair and got him wearing some dirty clothes that look like they were pulled out of a dumpster, he could have fit right in as far as looks go. Inside the ring...the guy was never all that good. Today, he'd actually have to be able to wrestle pretty damn well to even get out of NXT.
