Ben Askren was one of several guest fighters in attendance for the recent UFC London card, which was topped by a welterweight scrap between Jorge Masvidal and Darren Till.

Apparently, Askren had a bit of a tense run-in with Masvidal during his time in London. The former ONE and Bellator champ compared this run-in with Masvidal to his recent backstage encounter with Kamaru Usman (who he calls ‘Marty.’)

“I’m standing upstairs, then he walks up the stairs,” Askren explained on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show on Monday (via MMA Mania). “So I say, ‘Hey, Jorge is here.’ And then he gets pissed. It doesn’t take anything to piss these guys off, it’s kind of funny. Just like the Marty scene. All I said was, ‘You are not going to make me sit next to Marty, are you?’ And he got irate.

“It doesn’t not take much to make these guys mad. It’s kind of hilarious. So he starts cussing at me, I look at him, smile and he walks by to do his interview and that was it. Obviously I am not going to fight this guy in the hotel, I fight in the Octagon for a lot of money.

“But there was definitely no running away or me wishing him good luck or anything like that. It was a simple exchange and I don’t know why he felt the need to lie about it.”

Ben Askren and Jorge Masvidal have recently been linked to a fight at UFC 238 or UFC 239. Askren says he’s up for either date, but that Masvidal’s side of the deal is holding things up.

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 4/2/2019.