Drew McIntyre, WWE Champion, Tests Positive for COVID-19

Drew McIntyre has contracted the coronavirus. On Monday afternoon, WWE announced McIntyre has tested positive for COVID-19 and is currently in quarantine. He was set to appear on Monday Night Raw tonight and face Randy Orton.

With the news of McIntyre, the WWE Champion, out of action, the company is searching for a new main event for tonight's show. According to WrestleVotes, WWE is keeping Orton in the main event and looking for another opponent to face him. With the College Football Playoff National Championship game going on at the same time as Raw, WWE is looking to have a big match tonight.

This news comes after Goldberg made his return to WWE and challenged McIntyre for the WWE Championship at the Royal Rumble on Jan. 31. If McIntyre is in quarantine for two weeks, he will not appear on TV until the pay-per-view event.

McIntyre is coming off the best year of his career. In January 2020, McIntyre won the Royal Rumble match in the title event and then defeated Brock Lesnar to win the WWE Championship for the first time at WrestleMania 36 in April. McIntyre would lose the title to Orton in October but would win it again in November.

"No champion has ever been in this position before (working through a pandemic), but I feel like I'm the man that's prepared for the job considering my career of ups and downs and lessons learned," McIntyre told ComicBook.com when talking about performing during the COVID-19 pandemic. "I guess as the leader, as WWE champion, it was my job from the get-go, from the moment I won the title at WrestleMania, to start finding new ways to reach the audience at home and show the rest of the roster, like, 'Hey, I know you've been taught a certain way. A lot of you haven't been outside of WWE and you feel like you have to do things a certain way to reach the people at home, like ignoring the camera. But these are uncertain times, so we've got to try things."

McIntyre made his WWE debut in 2007. He was released from his contract in 2014 and spent time in the independent circuit and TNA (now Impact Wrestling) before returning to WWE in 2017. Overall, McIntyre has won the WWE Championship twice, the Intercontinental Championship and the Raw Tag Team Championship twice.