“That was one of the most vicious knockouts I’ve ever seen,” White told the post-event press conference in Las Vegas.

Askren was taken to hospital and the UFC president confirmed all of his tests came back negative. “He’s OK,” White said, before adding: “I’m sure he’s not OK, but, you know.”

The former Bellator and One champion looked like he didn’t know where he was when he was led out of the Octagon, having laid prone on the canvas for a few minutes.

“He’s bringing planking back,” was the reaction of UFC interim middleweight champion Israel Adesanya, in an excited reaction after watching the knockout in the middle of a backstage interview.

Masvidal showed off his “planking” too, jumping on the canvas after the knockout and mimicking the way Askren went “stiff as a board” in images that are surely already being used for a dozen different memes.

“I’m not God but I just baptised two people back to back,” Masvidal said, referencing his other highlight reel knockout of Darren Till. “The title is next.”

The talk of memes is apt, given that is the playground of Askren. He likes to mock fighters on social media with his favourite catchphrase “boom roasted”. He had tried to get in Masvidal’s head, claiming he was intimidated when he missed a pre-fight media day (Masvidal said he was sick) and that he had wiped the floor with Masvidal when they did wrestling training in 2008.

“There’s not too many people I dislike,” Masvidal said. “I have over 50 pro fights, he talked about my manhood, my culture, my ethnicity. Why do certain people get to do stuff online, you’re allowed to do and say whatever you want, other fighters can talk about other people’s religion, their wife?”

You could argue Askren’s online trolling smacks of arrogance, but up until Saturday night he had always backed up his bravado – he was 19-0, despite having no real striking game of note, because his grappling is at such an incredible level.

Many thought Robbie Lawler was about to teach him a lesson when he body-slammed Askren on his head in his first UFC fight and rained down shots on his face. Askren survived and beat Lawler but it was a debatable stoppage and not everyone was convinced.

“He’s not a mean guy, he doesn’t wanna punch me in the face,” Masvidal said. “He’s so predictable, man, he’s a scrub.

“Part of me just wanted to throw it out there, so if you do shoot like an idiot, like only you know how to … He took the bait, I put my hands behind my back, he probably thought we were gonna pattycake it up, he walked right into it.”

For a fighter who prides himself on possessing superior intelligence to his competitors, Askren’s fight plan did seem idiotic. Though given the shocked reaction of everyone in the T-Mobile Arena, and everyone commenting on social media, nobody saw that coming.

“That dude’s a killer, man,” White said of Masvidal. “What a brilliant plan, the execution, everything of that flying knee was brilliant.

“If you’re going in to fight with Ben Askren you can 99.9 per cent predict he’s gonna try to take you down right out of the gate. That’s what he thought, he set up the flying knee perfectly, landed it perfectly, it was super impressive.”

Masvidal joked that White might be mad that he embarrassed his “boy” Askren. But the UFC president has had a rocky relationship with the former Olympic wrestler, which kept him out of the UFC until the age of 34 when he had already retired believing he would never get the call, with some believing White didn’t like Askren’s fighting style.

The Cuban-American stressed it wasn’t “personal” between him and Askren, but it clearly was. He took great delight in dealing out a huge slice of humble pie.

“He thought it was going to be a three piece,” Masvidal said, referring to his own catchphrase. “He ended up getting the whole MGM Grand buffet to the face.”

“My whole vision was me beating his a** for 14 minutes and then putting him out like that,” Masvidal added. “I wanted to destroy him for as long as I could, bust his kneecaps, make him p*** blood. I think he got off easy.

Keeping up with the food theme, Masvidal had one last warning for Askren.

“It’s not over for Ben, he still has to deal with me, because if I see that dude at Wholefoods I’m gonna slap him up, because I don’t like him,” he said.