The Great American Bash (2005)  The Great American Bash (2005) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It was the 16th annual event and took place on July 24, 2005, at the HSBC Arena in Buffalo, New York. The event featured wrestlers and other talent that performed on the SmackDown! program. The main event was Batista defending the World Heavyweight Championship against John "Bradshaw" Layfield (JBL). JBL won the match after Batista was disqualified, but did not win the title because a championship can only be won via pinfall or submission. One of the featured matches on the undercard was Rey Mysterio versus Eddie Guerrero, which Mysterio won by pinfall. The other was Orlando Jordan versus Chris Benoit for the WWE United States Championship, which Jordan won, also by pinfall. The event grossed over US$375,000 in ticket sales from an attendance of 8,000, and received about 233,000 pay-per-view buys, the same amount as the following year's event. This enabled WWE's pay-per-view revenue to increase by $4.7 million from the previous year. When the 2005 event was released on DVD, it reached a peak position of second on "Billboard"'s DVD Sales Chart. The event was also available free of charge for Armed Forces members and their families. The Great American Bash event featured a card, which contained matches that involved different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds, plots and storylines. Wrestlers portrayed either a villainous or fan favorite gimmick as they followed a series of events which generally built tension, leading to a wrestling match. The name of a wrestler's character was not always the person's birth name, as wrestlers often use a stage name to portray their character. The main event at The Great American Bash was a standard wrestling match for the World Heavyweight Championship, in which Batista defended the championship against John "Bradshaw" Layfield (JBL). The buildup to the match began when WWE Champion John Cena was drafted to the Raw brand, taking the title with him and leaving SmackDown! without a top-tier championship for the heavyweight division. General Manager Theodore Long, a portrayed match maker and rules enforcer, announced a match between six wrestlers for a new top-tier SmackDown! championship. On the June 30 episode of the "SmackDown!" television program, the match took place between JBL, Chris Benoit, Christian, Booker T, Muhammad Hassan, and The Undertaker.