When Randy was working with the good guy babyfaces, he was so effective that you felt sorry for Randy and actually started disliking the babyfaces because of the brutal beating that little Randy was absorbing. Nobody could take bumps and sell any better than Randy. His facial expressions and body language were perfect.
Randy and Sam Houston were the era's two greatest sellers of the clothesline. When hit with a clothesline, both would take impressive 270 degree flips and land on their stomachs. Randy probably flipped a little further than Sam, but Sam's flip looked extremely impressive because of his extra height. In any event, they were both sensational. Of course, today's Lucha Libre stars and Billy Kidman are capable of similar acrobatics, and many of today's stars take very dangerous bumps in this hardcore era, but today's North American performers get paid a respectable salary. I do not know what Randy got paid, but I do know that the typical jobber like Randy got paid very little in that era, typically $50.00 or less per match. Randy was not a star. Unlike most guys on this site, Randy was not a future star paying his dues before being given a push. He was a jobber. Period. Of course, a conservative person would view his high risk/low reward behavior as reckless foolishness, while fans of hard core action would view it as heroic. In any event, he was fun to watch.
There are three fun stories I remember about Randy. First, one day the booker decided to reward Randy for his incredible selfless service by actually letting Randy win a match. It sounds fair, right? However, nobody wanted to lose a match to the ultimate jobber. Even the other jobbers refused to lose to Randy fearing that they would permanently lose all credibility with the fans. They solved the problem by persuading two wrestlers to work anonymously under masks as a "California tag team." One of the masked wrestlers did take a pin from Randy, but even then, it was treated as a flukey quick-count pin which occurred on a roll-up when the wrestler was not expecting it. Randy did not beat-up anybody. He just got to roll-up a guy for a quick count, achieving the only victory of his career. Of course, the embarrased "California tag team" was never seen again.
Another story involves Randy's incredible ability to sell a clothesline. Randy and Sam Houston were both summoned to at least one arena show, and I think it was several, even though they were not scheduled to wrestle. Their sole purpose for appearing at the show was to do a run-in at the end of a Road Warriors match to get hit with Road Warrior clotheslines and sell the moves like crazy with their back-flips. The goal of their mission was to sell the public on the Road Warriors as major stars. It was quite a tribute to the high regard the booker had for their back-flip maneuver.
The third story involves manager Jim Cornette and his clever plan to agitate and aggravate the marks and tease the smart fans with his interviews. Cornette announced that "Mulkey Mania" was sweeping the country, which was slightly credible among smart fan newsletter readers, but total nonsense among casual fans. Cornett claimed that thousands of fans were demanding that the Mulkey brothers be given a chance at the tag team titles. Of course this was nonsense since the Mulkeys had never won a match at that point. Cornette went on to claim that he received thousands of letters from "Mulkey Mania" fans demanding that his tag team, The Midnight Express, put their belts on the line against the Mulkeys. When asked to produce the letters, he claimed that the bags of mail were too heavy to bring in. Most fans saw this as another clever ploy by a cowardly heel manager to protect his tag team by matching them against weak opponents, but some smart fans liked the match up of what they considered to be some of the best workers in the business. The other announcer acted completely dumbfounded and baffled by the whole conversation. He may not have been acting.