It's been a tough couple of years for tiki torches.  First they became the official light source of NAZIS during the Charlottesville disaster . . . and now THIS . . .

On Thursday, two guys got into a fight in a mall food court in Madison, Wisconsin . . . and they were both armed with tiki torches.

Apparently they grabbed them from a restaurant's patio and started sword fighting with them.  Luckily they were electric tiki torches so the guys weren't swinging open flames.

The cops say the fight started because one of the guys gave the other guy a ride up from Chicago, but then got mad when the guy wouldn't buy him a cell phone.  So they started swinging tiki torches.

One of the guys ran off before the cops showed up, but the other is a 21-year-old named Damonte Lacey-Parr, and he was arrested for disorderly conduct while armed and criminal damage to property.