boyfriend gets upset when he sees my past hook-up

my boyfriend and i have been together for 6 months and he's great, we love each other a lot. however, there's one issue - he happens to bump into a guy that i hooked up with (one time) once every couple of months (their friend groups sometimes run into one another) and every time he gets extremely mad and normally takes it out on me. he ran into him this morning and started out by saying "just saw your boy". i ignored this part of what he said so as to avoid a fight (it felt like instigation), but then he went on to say that he was getting made fun of for running into him. i then said i noticed he had brought it up and asked if he wanted to talk about it, but then he just got really mad and said he needed space. i don't know what to do here. i regret hooking up with that guy but i haven't seen him in over a year (before i even knew my bf) nor have we had any kind of contact in months, i removed him from my contacts and from snapchat. i'm giving my boyfriend space rn but idk what to do. help??