MAME Menu Pops Up when Pressing Up on Analog Stick

I am running the latest version of Retroarch on a Fire TV Cube with Amazon Game Controllers (Gen 1 - Bluetooth only). I am exclusively running MAME 2003 Plus and having issues with the MAME Menu popping up mid-game whenever I long press up on the left analog stick. The menu looks similar to this

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/19554678/47619589-eb37b600-dab6-11e8-8b20-733d0a09b791.png

This is repeatable and doesn’t happen when you only press up a second or two but in many games (Donkey Kong, Pacman etc), you frequently need to hold the analog stick in the up position. It doesn’t happen when using the d-pad or the right analog stick.

I have “reset” the RetroArch app to default several times. It happens as well to a second Amazon Controller (same model). I even attempted to manually configure/bind the controller actions but it still happens.

This didn’t happen when I used MAME 2000 but I wanted to use MAME 2003 to leverage the 4 way controller options. I am using MAME .78 non-merged roms if it matters.

Thanks.