The point was that Google can find the moment of inertia of a ring or of a disc. ##mr^2## is the moment of inertia of a ring of mass m and radius r.
A demonstration I find convincing is to imagine that one is applying the work necessary to spin this arrangement up.
Start with the rod locked in place and spin up the disk to a rotation rate of ##\omega_a - \omega_b##. How much energy does that take? It should be ##\frac{I_b(\omega_a - \omega_b)^2}{2}##. Where ##I_b## is the moment of inertia of a disk or ring of radius r. (Which you can look up on Google)
Now unlock the rod and spin it up to a rotation rate of ##\omega_a##. Because the pivot on which the disk/ring is mounted is frictionless and mounted at the center of mass of the disk/ring, the energy required to do this is independent of the size, shape or rotation rate of the object on the end of the rod. It depends only on the disk/ring's mass. How much energy is this? It should be ##\frac{I_a\omega_a^2}{2}## where ##I_a## is the moment of inertia of a mass at a distance d. By definition, that's ##md^2##.
Having done this, the relative rotation rate of the disk or ring with respect to the rod will be ##-\omega_b## and we are in the correct final configuration. The energy in the configuration is the total of the energy that went into spinning it up.
There is no requirement that ##\omega_a \gt \omega_b##. The formula works regardless.