Cedric The Entertainer dismisses Katt Williams' joke-stealing allegations.

In case you missed the messiness, earlier this week, Katt Williams accused Cedric The Entertainer of stealing a joke that wound up closing his set in the legendary 1999 concert film, The Original Kings of Comedy.

"The reason it hit so bad was that I was in the theater," said Williams, donning a ten-gallon cowboy hat, in a recent interview with The Morning Hustle (see below.) "I paid my money to go see Kings of Comedy and to see my joke being there and not me was about as disrespectful as it gets in our craft and I took it really personally with Cedric The Entertainer at that time," Williams added, naming names in a heated portion of the interview.

But the charge didn't go unheeded. The following day, Cedric took to Instagram to clear the air, claiming Williams' allegation was unfounded. "Look, I have no idea what this brother is talking about," Cedric said in a short video posted to his page. "That joke is 30 years old," the comedian added, claiming he'd performed it for years prior to it appearing in Kings of Comedy. "That may be something he believes is true. "I've written a lot of jokes. I've had a lot of comedians steal my jokes as well. So I understand, you know, if you feel slighted by that, but that's my joke," Cedric concluded before running through the setup for the film's send-off, staking his claim to the "space shuttle" joke. Obviously, there's no way to settle this one for good. But for now, we'll just have to wait for some other form of verification to surface.

Watch Katt Williams and Cedric The Entertainer spar over ownership of a joke in the clips below. Hold tight for a verdict to arrive in the weeks ahead.