What’s the hype level headed into Saturday's heavyweight title fight at UFC 321 in Abu Dhabi? And what’s to be done about referee errors in MMA? Plus, some surprisingly strong feelings about chicken tendies.

All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @BenFowlkesMMA.

@JeanDeMi_: As a french, i'm not that hype by Gane, are you as an international gentleman ?! What do you think of Fernand Lopez/MMA Factory ?! I'm not sure they are good with game plan..

Honestly? Ciryl Gane seems like a really nice guy. Nothing really objectionable about the man. And he has a fun style to watch … when he’s allowed to stand there and do his thing. But I cannot convince myself that he might be the best heavyweight on the planet due to, you know, recent events.

Even if Gane goes out there on Saturday and starches Tom Aspinall (this is heavyweight, after all, so anything is possible), I’ll still remember how he looked like a white belt in his free intro class against Jon Jones. I’ll also remember how he got outwrestled by a one-legged Francis Ngannou, who really isn’t even all that much of a wrestler on two good wheels.

So I can’t really get excited about Gane as a top heavyweight, even if I do like the guy and enjoy watching him fight. As for game plan, it’s hard to plan around poor takedown defense. But maybe Fernand Lopez can light a fire under Gane by convincing him that Aspinall and his team were behind this jewel heist at the Louvre and it’s up to Gane to seek bloody vengeance.

@shadore66: Gane wins, and we get Jones vs Gane 2 at the white house. I'm from the future and here to tell you about this terrible course of events

That feels terrifyingly possible, just because I know how this sport can be sometimes. If it does come to pass, I hope we all agree that Jones should be forbidden from even attempting a takedown in that fight, simply to make it interesting.

@steviefenn: Can Aspinall but a dominant champion for the next few years? Who do you see as his biggest challenge?

Assuming that “Gas Hands Tom” makes it past Gane, as I suspect he will, I think the big threat is a lack of meaningful contenders. Look at the current top five. With a win over Gane, Aspinall will have beaten four of them already. And it’s the top four.

Certainly, fresh contenders like Jailton Almeida (currently No. 5) and Waldo Cortes Acosta (No. 6) could find their way up the ladder and into a title fight some time over the next year or so, but at the moment heavyweight feels like an abandoned division. It’s like they’re all just fighting to see who’s the best of who’s left. I mean, Tai Tuivasa has lost five straight and he’s ranked No. 11. Take a moment and let that sink in.

@Alexand63797857: Is there really any chance at this point that the newer version of the Ali act doesn't pass?

All the biggest power brokers in combat sports seem to have agreed in advance to line up behind this thing. Which, that right there tells me it will probably not benefit rank-and-file fighters.

A good rule of thumb is that whenever the rich and powerful team up to change the rules, they’re not doing it out of an abundance of concern for the little guy.

@beatdook: This has been on my mind for weeks and I can’t think of a better place for an insightful discussion. Why is everyone ok with Wendy’s forcing us to use the phrase “chicken tendy’s”?

I have to say, I don’t hate it. There’s something fun about the phrase. Chicken tendies. That’s fun to say, at least if you’re the kind of person who can give yourself over to a little whimsy now and then. Also, and here’s the part that might really sting to hear, it’s appropriately silly for something like chicken tenders, which are not a serious menu item.

Please understand that I do not make that statement from a place of judgment. I have enjoyed some chicken tendies on many occasions. My children have at times subsisted on a diet that, for reasons of pure stubbornness, consisted mainly of chicken tendies and cereal. I could be convinced to eat some tendies at almost any point of any day.

But there’s a reason chicken tendies are a classic staple of the kids’ menu at most family restaurants. They are not cuisine, in any sense of the word. They do not deserve to be taken seriously. In fact, maybe we should all be forced to call them tendies all the time, just so we have to be real with ourselves about what we’re ordering. Go ahead and enjoy your tendies, my friend. But don’t lie to yourself about it.

@INCagefighting: What feels like the more legitimate title fight: Virna vs Dern or Rocky vs MBS? Both are similar in being vacant titles in divisions at their lowest ebb. One fighter being a disrespected workhorse on a long winning streak, the other a grappling ace there by default.

Neither is anything you could call a real title fight. They’re just fights that the UFC decided to attach a shiny gold belt to, for reasons of timing and marketing and convenience.

And hey, that’s the fight game sometimes. I can’t hate on Mackenzie Dern or Virna Jandiroba for seizing the opportunity and trying to make the most of it. (Can’t hate on Raquel Pennington or Mayra Bueno Silva either, even if I totally forgot that fight happened until you just mentioned it.) But we all know what this is, right? There is zero chance that the winner of Saturday’s co-main event will be regarded as the best strawweight in the world. We already know who that is, and it’s Zhang Weili. She’s proved it many times now. If someone else wants a chance to sit in the big chair while the boss is away, fine. But I think we’re capable of putting it in the appropriate context.

@justlikelasagna: Refs…am I right? Can’t have a sport without them. But then again, they might kill the sport by being indefensibly awful at their job. Fix it please.

OK, but how are we going to fix it so that refs never make mistakes? They’re all basically doing this as a part-time weekend job. No one wants to screw it up. But to err is human or whatever, so what are you going to do?

Once I was playing in a beer league hockey game and a ref very obviously screwed up, calling a hooking penalty on me when in fact I was the player who had been hooked. He just messed it up. Everyone could see that. But once he’d sent me to the penalty box he couldn’t call me back out again and be like, 'My bad, everyone.' Then every call he made from that point on would have been subject to endless debate. So you know what he did? He let me serve my penalty and then later he looked the other way on what should have been a tripping call against my team. I know all this because he told me afterward, which I had no choice but to respect. This is what’s known in sports as a classic “make-up call.”

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You don’t really get to do make-up calls in fight sports, though. When the ref intervenes, he instantly and irrevocably changes the contest. That’s just baked into the sport, and there’s only so much we can do about that.

So yes, while I agree that refs should do better and listen for the damn air horn and make sure someone is really choked out before they stop it, I also think we have to understand that they’re still going to screw it up sometimes.

Note: This does not apply to the insane way we approach fouls in this sport. If everyone knows the rules in advance, it makes no sense to keep warning people after they commit the same foul multiple times, all while facing no actual consequences. That’s one where refs absolutely can and should do better.

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