Bob Menery finally got his hand raised. According to Menery, Dana White answered with a text message that will probably outlive the highlight.
The podcaster says the UFC CEO reached out after his Brand Risk 16 win over content creator Lorenzo Jordan, who goes by Big Zo, on Oct. 16. In Menery’s telling, White congratulated him in the least congratulatory way available. A clip of Menery recounting the exchange was posted on X by Jed I. Goodman on Oct. 30, and MMA Mania picked it up from there.
“He basically said, ‘Congratulations, you beat a 3-foot dude Probably your next fight is a 9-year-old girl, and I’m taking the 9-year-old girl.’”
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Look at that last part again. White didn’t stop at mocking the opponent. He made a pick, and he took the kid.
How Menery got here
Jordan is a little person, and Menery walked in with a 13-inch height advantage. He used it. The fight lasted one round, and Menery spent that round putting a beating on a much smaller man. MMA Mania called the result neither pretty nor fair, which is about as generous as anyone has been about it.
It was still Menery’s first official win in combat sports, and he needed one. He lost to former football star Johnny Manziel earlier this year. Before that, his fight with Osiris Williams last August ended in a no contest. That makes Brand Risk 16 his third trip to the ring and leaves him at 1-1 with one no contest.
The needling from White also comes with history. MMA Mania reports the two have been feuding for nearly five years, so this wasn’t a random drive-by from the boss of the UFC. It was the latest round in a long one.
All of this comes from Menery’s own retelling, and he hedged it himself by saying White basically said it, so treat the exact wording as his version of the text. Nobody has named his next opponent in anything reported so far, nine-year-old or otherwise.
My take: the joke is mean, and it’s also the sharpest fight analysis anyone has offered on Brand Risk 16. You take a fight where you’re giving up nothing and getting 13 inches, you win it, and the guy who books real fights every weekend notices exactly what everyone else noticed. Menery has a simple fix if he wants White to find new material. Book somebody his own size and win that one too.
