Before Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm, or Amanda Nunes, there was Gina Carano. 

Although a new generation of fight fans might recognize Carano as the popular movie star from "Haywire" and "Deadpool," there was a time where she brought that same notoriety and fame inside the cage. 

Carano helped bring women’s MMA out of the shadows and undercards and onto the marquee. Her Strikeforce bout against Cris Cyborg on Showtime in 2009 marked the first time that women headlined a major MMA event on cable television. 

However, that fight ended in Carano’s first and only professional defeat and marked the last time she stepped into an MMA cage. 

In a recent interview with the Top Turtle MMA Podcast, Carano spoke about her recently released movie, "Scorched Earth," and how MMA is never really far from her mind.

“I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that I’m not on the treadmill, and I’m not punching and kicking someone in my head,” Carano said. 

This feeling is only intensified by the fact that she now watches even more MMA. In doing so, she sees people she’s familiar with on a constant basis. 

“I worked with some of those girls at a point. I fought Cris [Cyborg],” Carano said. “I [still] work with some of those girls now. I still train.”

The fact that she still thinks about it and still trains begs the question: Is a comeback in the cards? According to Carano, she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to say "no." 

“That question has always been there… I can’t get through a workout without it," Carano said. "I don’t think it ever leaves you as a fighter. I’ve never retired because you never know what I’m gonna do.”

In fact, she expects that feeling to continue for the rest of her life. 

“I’ll be 70 years old in my basement saying, ‘I just wanna come back,'" she laughs. 

So, what would it take to get one of the pioneers of mainstream women's MMA back into the cage now? For one, it would take the right reasons. 

“I could never come back and fight with my priorities not set… I could never come back for the money or I could never do it for the attention,” Carano said. “I would really have to do it for myself and to see if I wanted it and had it in me to push myself there again. That’d be the only reason I’d ever want to do that again.”

When pressed on whether this goal ever lined up in real time, Carano admitted that it was closer than most people know. 

“Oh man, you have no idea," she said. "There’s been a lot of moments [I almost fought again].”

So close, in fact, that there were contracts on the table. 

“There [have] been contracts, but there [have] never been contracts signed," Carano said. "That was for a number of different reasons.” 

Whether it was Hollywood pulling her away or something else, Carano felt that there never seemed like a time when fighting became her No. 1 focus. 

And that is what stopped each of the attempts to come back. 

“When things keep pulling you away, you know you obviously aren’t making this a priority if you don’t want to do it," Carano said. 

But whether things will ever stop pulling at Carano enough to get her back into a cage is just something we’ll have to wait and see. 

Until then, we’ll have to settle with seeing her on the silver screen. 

By Daniel Vreeland