One of Hemingway's most spectacular boxing fights was between him and his friend Morley Callaghan. Here is a piece about the fight from http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=2/22/1903
Callaghan and Hemingway had been friends since their
newspaper days in Toronto, and both liked to box. Callaghan was considerably
shorter and lighter, but more experienced, and in an early sparring session
he had "worked out a routine, darting in and out with fast lefts to the
head," while Hemingway "waited for a chance to nail me solidly":
It must have been exasperating to him that my left was always beating him
to the punch. His mouth began to bleed.... His tongue kept curling along his
lip, wiping off blood.... Suddenly he spat at me; he spat a mouthful of blood;
he spat in my face.
When Callaghan stepped back in shock, Hemingway explained, "That's what
the bullfighters do when they're wounded.... It's a way of showing contempt."
At a later session, F. Scott Fitzgerald was volunteered as timekeeper, charged
with regulating one-minute rounds with two-minute rests between. Fitzgerald
became so enthralled with the boxing that he forgot the clock -- until the
out-of-gas Hemingway made a desperate lunge at Callaghan, and got knocked
on his back by a hard cross to the jaw. When Fitzgerald cried out, "Oh,
my God! I let the round go four minutes!" Hemingway spat his bullfighter's
contempt in a new direction: "All right, Scott...if you want to see me
getting the s*** kicked out of me, just say so. Only don't say you made a
mistake."