Mahoney landed at the eighth-placed Cowboys this season after the Bulldogs baulked at his management's request for a long-term extension early last year.
The Bulldogs agreed to release Mahoney from the final year of his contract to sign with the Cowboys for 2026, but soon began preferencing Bailey Hayward for first-grade opportunities at hooker.
Coach Cameron Ciraldo benched Mahoney in August before dropping him altogether for the first week of the 2025 finals series.
Reports of a confrontation between Mahoney and his former teammates in Las Vegas did little to silence speculation over tension between the hooker and his old club.
"I would suspect, going back and playing there, means more to him than any other player this weekend," Payten said ahead of Friday's game.
"He might say publicly it doesn't, but I know myself, I've been in that situation, it does. He's super motivated."
In Mahoney's time at the Bulldogs, Ciraldo had championed the diminutive hooker's penchant for riling up opposition players.
The coach would not be drawn to comment on whether the 10th-placed Bulldogs would receive a taste of the same medicine in their fight to recover from consecutive defeats.
"That's up to him. I'm not worried about the opposition team," Ciraldo said.
Ciraldo dropped Marcelo Montoya after a tough night in last Friday's 32-12 thrashing from Brisbane, with Enari Tuala to line up on a wing against the Cowboys.
A mainstay of the backline since returning from the Warriors last year, Montoya has been tasked with improving his defensive technique.
"Sometimes when you drop players, it's through maybe attitude or effort. It is nothing like that with Marce," Ciraldo said.
"His attitude and his effort is exactly where it needs to be, he just needs to work on a couple of things technically and he'll go and do that and he'll be back."
So too is Ciraldo remaining calm despite a noticeable drop in defensive form this season.
To this point last season, the Bulldogs were the NRL's best defensive team, having leaked 46 fewer points than the next-tightest team through eight rounds.
This year, the Bulldogs' 23.7 points conceded per game represents only the seventh-best figures across the league, and an increase of almost 10 points compared to the same time last year.
Ciraldo is confident the Bulldogs are "not that far away" from recapturing their best.
"We've done a lot of good things defensively, then in moments, we've let ourselves down and had some uncharacteristic defensive errors," he said.
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